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NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

AN INQUIRY CONCERNING 

THE PRACTICAL CONTENT OF THE ONTOLOGICAL 
PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 

AND THE 

RELATION OF THE IDEA OF THE OBJECT OF RELIGION TO 
CONSCIOUS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, IN THE LIGHT 
OF MODERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND 
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 



Thesis Submitted for the Doctorate in Philosophy 



by 



JAMES PALMER. 



NEW YORK 
1904 



NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 



THE IDEA OF GOD 

AN INQUIRY CONCERNING 

THE PRACTICAL CONTENT OF THE ONTOLOGICAL 
PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 

"AND THE 

RELATION OF THE IDEA OF THE OBJECT OF RELIGION [TO 
CONSCIOUS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, IN THE LIGHT 
OF MODERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND 
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 



Thesis Submitted for the Doctorate in Philosophy 

by 

JAMES PALMEK. 



NEW YORK 
1904 



3*0 °\ 



Gift 

3gis last. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The Problem and its Eelations : Eeligion Differentiated from 
Speculative Thought. — Speculative Perversion of the Onto- 
logical Proof. — Eelated to Eeligious Experience. — Anselm's 
Identification of the Idea of a most Perfect Being with the 
God of Eeligion. — Analysis of Consciousness. — Internal Fac- 
tors. — The Expression of the Eeligious Emotions. — The 
Emotions and their Eoots. The Work of Consciousness. The 
Idea. Its Purpose. — The three Factors of Consciousness. — 
The Historic Development of Eeligions. — The Construction 
of Proofs. — Outline of Discussion 1-9 



PART I. 

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 

Chapter I. Historical Survey : Augustine on Truth. — An- 
selm's Discovery. — Emotions Described. — Key to the Argu- 
ment. — Descartes' Appeal to Causality. — Leibnitz, the Prin- 
ciple of Non-contradiction. — Attitude of Different Schools of 
Philosophy. Kant's Criticism 10-14 

Chapter II. Concept and Being: Anselm's Apparent per Sal- 
turn. — Eoyce's Analysis of the Concepts of Being. — Eealism, 
Mysticism, Critical Eationalism and Idealism Defined. — Eeal- 
ism, Monistic and Pluralistic, Spinoza. — Locke and Hume. — 
Mysticism. — Critical Eationalism, Kant, Transcendental Ideal- 
ism Combined with Empirical Eealism. — Isolating Single Fac- 
ulties. — Phenomena and Things-in -themselves. — The Concept 
of Validity. Kant's Criticism of the a priori Proof. Value 
of Kant's Work. — Idealism. The Analysis of Consciousness. 
— Eelation of Idea and Object. Purpose of the Idea a Quest 

for its Other. — Idealism and the Ontological Proof. 14-23 

iii 



iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PART II. 

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF AND PSYCHOLOGY OF 

RELIGION. 

Chapter I. The Relation of Religion to Psychology : The 
Spheres of Religion and Psychology. — Religion has a Psy- 
chology. — Description of Experience. — An Ulterior Value of 
the Ontological Proof. — Descartes' Discovery. Psychology 
Separated from Religion. — Efforts to Function Religion 24-28 

Chapter II. Religious Experience: Kant's Criticism. — An- 
selm and Augustine. — The God-idea and Religious Emotion. 

— The Ontological Proof Directs to Introspection. — Descartes. 

— Religious Emotions Facts. — Finiteness and Limitation. — 
Rational and Material Self Distinguished in Consciousness. — 
Religion Involves all Faculties. — A Primary Religious Emo- 
tion. — Development of this Emotion. — Relation of Ontolog- 
ical Idea to. — The Infinite, Max Miiller. — Shamanism and 
Divination. — Relation of Animism. — Its Support to our Theory. 

— Material and Mental Fields for Theogonic Material. — De- 
velopment of Pantheism. It is a Philosophy. — Illustration from 
Religion of Romans. — Higher Forms of Religious Experience. 
Metanoia. — The Testimony of Psychology. — Worship. — 
Development of Saintliness. — Corrective Influence of Psy- 
chology. — Religious Experience a Part of the Totality of 
Experience 28-43 

Chapter III. Experience as Knowledge : Credo ut Intel- 
legam. — A Corrective to Mysticism. — Historic Revelation. 

— Enthusiasm. — Methods of Dreams, Intoxications, Trance. 

— Psychology's Treatment. — The Subconscious. — Tests of 
Enthusiasm, Truth and Value. — -The Founder of Christianity. 

— Mysticism. — Buddhism. — Social Self Consciousness. — 
The Unfolding of the God-idea 43-52 

PART III. 

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF AND ETHICS. 

Chapter I. Ethical Principles : Conflict of Theories. — Ethics 
Related to Religion. — Problem of Ethics. — Purpose in Act 
and Idea. — Meaning of Purpose and Idea. — Science of Ethics. 

— Light from Anthropology. — Development of Ethics along 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



V 



with Keligion. — Limit to Ethical Force of Nature Religion, 
Fatalism. — The Fields of Religion and Ethics. — Light from 
Psychology. — Hume. — Functioning of Ethics. — Psycho- 
logical Analysis of Conduct. — Failure of Hedonism. — Of 
Institutionalism. — The Norms of Ethics, that Discovered by 
Religion 53-63 

Chapter II. The Ontological Method of Ethics : Our Atti- 
tude toward Metaphysics. — The Reality of Things, Ideas and 
Events. — Kant's Ethical Theory. — The Good Will, the Moral 
Law, Conception of Duty. — Origin of Moral Conceptions, 
Autonomy and Heteronomy. — The Radical Evil, Restoration. 
— Relation of our Theory to Kant's. — Criticism of Kant. — 
Autonomy in Saint Paul's Conception of His Relation to God. — 
<{ Is the Good Good because God Wills it? " — Calvinistic De- 
terminism. — Our Agreement with Kant Concerning Autonomy 
and Heteronomy. — Service of the Ontological Proof. 63-69 

Conclusion : The Ontological Proof a Guiding Principle. — Re- 
ligion the Tangible Proof. 69-70 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



Anselmi Opera. Minge's Collection. Vol. 155. 
Bibliotheca Sacra. 1851 Translation of the Proslogion. Maginnis. 
Augustine. Schaff'sLibrary of Nicene and Post-Mcene Fathers. Vols. 
1-8. Buffalo. 

Shedd, W. G. T. History of Christian Doctrine. 2 vols. Scribners. 
Flint, Robert. Theism and Agnosticism. 2 vols. Scribners. 
Windelband. A History of Philosophy. Trans, by Tufts. Mac- 
millan. 

Spinoza's Works. Bohn's Philosophical Library. 2 vols. Trans, by 
Elwes. 

Descartes. Discourse on Method, Meditations. Trans, by John Veitch. 
Blackwood. 

Kant. Critique of Pure Eeason. Trans, by Max Muller. Macmillan. 
Locke. On the Human Understanding. Ward, Lock & Co. 
Leibnitz. New Essays on the Understanding. Trans, by Langley. 
Hume. Treatise of Human Nature. Selby-Bigge. Ed. Oxford. 
Hume. Essays, Greene and Grose. Longmans. 
Royce, Josiah. The World and the Individual. 2 vols. Macmillan. 
Pfleiderer. Religions-philosophie auf geschichtlicher Grundlage. Ver- 

lag von G. Reimer. Berlin. 
Religionsphilosophie. Von H. Hoffding. Ubersetzt von F. Bendixen. 

Leipzig. 

Ausgewahlte Werke. Edward von Hartmann. Das religiose Be- 
wusstsein. Philosophie des Umbewussten. Herman Haacke. 
Leipzig. 

Schleiermacher, F. On Religion. Speeches to its Cultured Despisers 
Trans, by J. Oman. Keagan Paul. 

Tiele, C. P. Outlines of the History of Religion to the Spread of Uni- 
versal Religions. Trans, by J. E. Carpenter. Keagan Paul. 

Lotze, Hermann. The Philosophy of Religion. Trans, by Conybeare. 
Macmillan. 

vii 



viii 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



Max Miiller, F. The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion. 4 vols- 
Longmans. 

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Longmans. 
Myers, F. W. H. Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. 
Longmans. 

Spencer, Herbert. Synthetic Philosophy. Principles of Sociology. 3 
vols. Appleton. 

Wallace, W. Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics. 
Oxford. 

Martineau, James. Study of Religion. Macmillan. 
Rhys-Davids. Buddhism. Putnams. 

Aristotle. The Nicomachian Ethics. Trans, by Williams. Longmans. 

Martineau, James. Types of Ethical Theory. Macmillan. 

Kant. Theory of Ethics including the Critique of the Practical Reason. 

Trans, by T. K. Abbott. Longmans. 
Sidgwick, Henry. The Method of Ethics. Macmillan. 
Taylor, A. E. The Problem of Conduct. Macmillan. 
Seth, James. Ethical Principles. Scribners. 
Ellinwood, F. F. Notes on Comparative Religion. 
Edwards, Jonathan. Works in 8 vols. , by Isaac Thomas, Jr. 
Paulsen, F. Immanuel Kant, His Life and Doctrine. Trans, by Creigh- 

ton and Lefevre. Scribners. 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE PEOBLEM AND ITS RELATIONS. 

Religion. — The differentiation of Religion from speculative 
thought took place in a process of historical development. To 
Schleiermacher belongs the distinction of being the first to point 
out that Religion has a sphere peculiarly its own. Speculative 
religious thought may take the form of Animism, Pantheism, 
Deism or Theism ; it may be dogmatical, skeptical or even atheistic, 
but in these ranges it diverges from Religion and is metaphysical 
rather than practical. It was to guard against the waste of energy 
in such dialectical performances that Kant thought out and gave 
to the world his Critique of Pure Reason. The " police duty," 
however, which he thought this work would serve, has not been 
and never can be successful. If life had no personal concern in 
the Object of pure reason's research, the human mind could well 
abandon its quest, settle down quietly to the humdrum of a routine 
life and content itself with empirical verities. This however is 
not the case. Religion is a vitally personal topic ; and, as an ever 
present experience, it keeps reason in touch with the Object of 
speculative inquiry on the practical side. Kant himself was aware 
of this fact and sought to develop it in the Critique of the Practi- 
cal Reason but the relation is too manifold to be summed up in a 
Categorical Imperative. 

Speculative Religion. — It is the intention of this thesis to direct 
attention to the relation of the a 'priori proof of the existence of 
God, as it was formulated by Anselm, to Religion, as opposed to 
or different from, speculative religious thought. The Ontological 
Proof as a proof has been abundantly treated. It would take the 
space usually allotted to a monograph to sufficiently catalogue the 
discussion it has occasioned. But in all of this treatment by lead- 

1 



2 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



ers of thought and men of less ability the argument has been given 
a speculative turn and the practical content, which is a matter of 
permanent value, has been overlooked. One needs only to turn to 
some books on Theism or treatises on Dogmatic Theology to verify 
the truth of this statement. It will be discovered there, that the 
discussion turns on necessary existence, perfection of being, exist- 
ence as a part of the concept of a perfect being, causality, etc. 
Descartes was the first thus to use and abuse Anselm's discovery. 
By so doing he rescued this form of proof from its obscurity but 
at the same time diverted it from Religion to Philosophy. Leib- 
nitz, Spinoza and Herbert of Cherbury agreed in following Des- 
cartes in this perversion. It thus entered into Theism, Deism, 
and Pantheism. And it was against these speculative forms of 
the argument that Kant hurled his powerful criticism. 

The position here taken in the face of this speculative use of 
the Proof is that Anselm discovered the argument in devout 
meditation, that it is inseparably linked, even in its speculative 
parts, with religious experience, and, that it has a perennial force 
as an expression of the religious consciousness of mankind. And, 
while it may be true that only a few gifted minds grasp the signifi- 
cance of the words in which Anselm repeatedly expressed him- 
self, nevertheless, the Ontological Idea has ever been a constitu- 
tive principle in the development of historic religions. Since the 
days of Amselm many new fields of knowledge have been ex- 
plored, titanic efforts have been made to formulate a satisfactory 
theory of knowledge, the science of psychology has rendered definite 
service to the examination of all experimental phenomena, and 
anthropology has introduced new facts for the science of religion. 
The fruits of the labor in all these fields will be found to be of 
distinct service in our examination of the subject before us. 
With these preliminary remarks we will now enter upon the task 
of stating the Problem and its Relations. 

Consciousness is the inner mystery of experience. The 
thought world stands on one side and the world of things stands 
over against it. Consciousness, in between, is the transformation 
point. When Religion turns to consciousness for a verification 



INTRODUCTION. 



3 



of its facts, it has made its appeal to the highest court of human 
decisions. In its inception, preservation and continuation Eeli- 
gion is always related to conscious experience. The problem 
arises when religious experience relates itself to an Object. 
This is not remarkable since a problem always arises when reason 
attempts to show the relation of any idea to its object. There is 
a heterogeneousness of object and idea which consciousness alone 
serves to link together. It was this apparent chasm between the 
idea and its object which Anselm overleaped when he said : 
" Sic ergo vere est aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest, et nec 
cogitari possit non esse : et hoc es Tu, Domine Deus noster." 1 
The transition from the " aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest " 
to the " hoc es Tu " constitutes the great problem of epistemology, 
and the reasoning by which this apparent per saltum was removed 
formed the Ontological argument in its most complete statement. 
It runs as follows : " Et certe id, quo majus cogitari nequit, non 
potest esse in intellectu solo. Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, 
potest cogitari esse et in re, quod majus est. . . . Existet ergo 
procul dubio aliquid, quo majus cogitari non valet, et intellectu et in 
re." 2 The argument itself is not what chiefly concerns us. From 
our point of view we are most interested to observe the conscious 
effort which the argument expresses to pass from what is " in solo 
intellectu " to an " esse in intellectu et in re " or the " Hoc es Tu " 
of experience. We perceive in this effort an expression of the 
fact that consciousness in religious experience as in other expe- 
rience recognizes internal facts with both internal and external 
meanings. 

So long as attention is restricted to the internal facts, Religion 
is a psychic state in which feeling and need, fear and hope, 
enthusiasm and submission play a great part. 3 Nevertheless these 
experiences are not without ideas which constitute a relation 
between the conscious self and all that is beyond. For this reason 
while all consciousness is unquestionably internal, a purely inter- 

1 Anselm, "Prc-slogion 2." 

2 Anselm, " Proslogium II Opera," Minge ed. 
3 H6ffding, " Religions-philosophie," I. 



4 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



nal Religion is excluded fiom the realm of possibility. Again 
these psychic states are composed of emotions which tend to express 
themselves either physically or intellectually. This brings Religion 
to the surface of life if it does not extend it further. It is the 
expression of the religious emotions rather than the emotions 
themselves and their roots which occupy a large part of the atten- 
tion of students who devote themselves to the study of Religion. 
The books on Religion and the customs of Religion are full of 
them. The attitudes, forms and symbols of worship are either 
external representations of internal states or the imitation of per- 
sons in whom such states are a reality. The same emotions under 
differing conditions may find expression in music, in poetry, in 
artistic symbolism or in a creed, each of which represents life's 
reaction upon its own conscious experiences. And last of all and 
best of all the most perfect expression of the religious emotions is 
to be seen in a life, so ordered, that the inner experiences are 
brought into harmony with the Universal Will. This I would call 
the ethical expression of the religious emotions. 

The fact is to be noted, in this connection, that it is the nature 
of the religious emotions to express themselves and that it is 
within the sphere of consciousness, when attention is directed 
thereto, not only to be aware of the outward facts of experience, 
but also, to know the emotions themselves from which these facts 
arise. It is also to be observed that the same emotions such as 
fear, faith and love which compel certain physical attitudes will, 
under changed conditions, constrain to ethical conduct. In this 
truth the hope of culture is enshrined. The dynamic is given. It 
is simply a question of how a present energy is to be directed. 
The power lies back of the emotions. 

It is when we turn our attention to these emotions themselves 
and their roots that we meet with the Problem which the Onto- 
logical Proof thrusts upon us. Here is a force which is known 
in consciousness which produces something in a matter of fact 
world. How can we get at it ? First of all it is to be asserted 
that consciousness is that function of intelligence whereby facts 
and ideas are combined. There is no consciousness without both 



INTRODUCTION. 



5 



of these elements and, in the case in hand, emotions would be 
simple facts or events which consciousness could not grasp if they 
were not linked inseparably with their corresponding ideas. Fear, 
faith and love are nothing without an object, however ideal that 
object may be. And it is the idea of an object, linked with them 
which constitutes them conscious emotions. This idea which the 
understanding involves with these simple emotions is the object or 
Other of which they are correlates. We are, therefore, in experi- 
ence never conscious of a pure emotion alone, or of an object alone, 
but of an emotion combined with the idea of an object. Thus in 
the Ontological Argument the emotion expressed in the words 
" Hoc es Tu " is not pure ecstasy but ecstasy combined with the 
idea of an object whose best description is " id quo majus cogitari 
nequit." 

So much then for consciousness. It reveals in an experience, a 
fact, that is, in the present case, an emotion and also an idea 
which represents, in the case under consideration, an Other — 
" than which a greater cannot be conceived." Our entire theory 
depends on these two factors of consciousness. Neither can be 
taken up or abandoned without the other. The reality of the 
emotions is part and parcel with the reality of self. The idea, 
on the other hand, without which the emotions amount to zero so 
far as consciousness is concerned is the counterpart of the Other 
of the universe to which the self is related in various ways. In 
fact the relationship is so manifold that an infinite variety of 
objects and events is involved in the development of Religion. 
But since the individual self, as known in consciousness, makes 
use of an understanding, subject to the forms of thought, its rela- 
tion to the Other must be an historical relation, in so much as 
the relation of every idea to its object is successive and therefore 
historical. 

Idea. — The next step after observing this inseparable union 
of emotion and idea in a living consciousness is to make a further 
analysis of our concept of an idea. The division of ideas accord- 
ing to their simplicity or complexity must ever be a relative 
division since the simplest idea is both sensory and motor, cog- 



6 



THE IDEA OP GOD. 



nitive and conative. Neither does the Cartesian notion of vivid- 
ness nor the Spinozistic determination of adequacy help us. Hume 
was nearer to our point of view when he spoke of the force and 
liveliness of ideas. Professor Royce in his GifFord lectures on the 
World and the Individual says : u An idea is any state of mind 
that has a conscious meaning." In another place he says : " Your 
intelligent ideas of things never consist in mere images of those 
things, but always involve a purpose of how you intend to act 
toward the things of which you have ideas." This use of the 
term he abundantly defends and makes the basis of his theory of 
knowledge. An idea without a purpose, an intention, a meaning 
is as little an idea as the image in a mirror. 

Holding fast then to this definition of an idea and returning to 
what we have already observed in consciousness we are prepared 
to assert that a state of consciousness containing an emotion with 
its idea involves the three possible psychical factors — feeling, 
knowing and willing. In other words the act of consciousness 
involves the entire personality. And the fact that a religious 
consciousness has for its content an emotion directed to or awak- 
ened by a Supernatural Being does not isolate it from these 
psychical conditions. Thus our analysis has supplied us with a 
guiding principal whose significance will appear as the discussion 
proceeds ; for we find that speculative religious thought is ever 
tending to connect itself with one or other mental faculty and thus 
present an abnormal development. Deism and theistic systems 
are predominantly intellectual. Schleiermacher and the mystics 
give too much prominence to the emotions or feelings. And Kant 
followed by Schopenhauer and von Hartmann has given undue 
prominence to the will. The only corrective for such one sided- 
ness is a return to the religious consciousness. And it is the 
Ontological proof alone, as an expression of the religious conscious- 
ness, which gives due emphasis to the internal and external mean- 
ings of the religious life. 

Public Religion. — Thus far, we have not gone beyond, the per- 
sonal and private limits of religious experience. We have been 
concerned with it as a psychological and internal affair. It is clear, 



INTRODUCTION. 



7 



however, that the expression of the religious emotions must be ex- 
ternal, and, to a certain extent, public. It is also evident that the 
religious idea, in going beyond self to find its Other, must also dis- 
cover new relationships in a world or universe. The mind accepts 
what it finds and reacts upon it, but, in so doing, it gives up its 
private character and recognizes self as one of many. The world 
is discovered to be full of things and events which either help or 
hinder the religious life in its progress. 

Historical Development of Religions. — If our account, up to this 
point is accepted as a true analysis of the content of a religious 
consciousness, we need have no difficulty in accounting for the his- 
toric development of religions. In a very general description 
these may be grouped under three heads, as follows : (1) Fetishism 
and Animism, (2) Polytheism and Pantheism, (3) Henotheism 
and Theism. These groups each combine practical and theoreti- 
cal elements. In each of them a religious emotion, combined with 
its idea, is found seeking its object or Other ; and the Keligion is 
named according to the object seized upon. Taking the first 
group first, one can easily understand, how the mind of the primi- 
tive nature worshiper, not satisfied with the limited nature of his 
fetish, would seek to satisfy his idea, by increasing the number of 
his fetishes and philosophizing concerning their occult powers. 
Thus animism, which spiritualizes the objects of worship, would 
form a kind of philosophy of fetishism. In fact, Tiele takes the 
position, that no Religion is to be found, in which this process has 
not taken place. From this position, the transition is not great, 
after the mind has discovered that single objects of worship 
whether small or great however multiplied and idealized are not 
sufficient to satisfy the purpose of its idea, the transition is not 
great, I say, from Polytheism to Pantheism. It is readily seen, 
if we follow this line of thought, that Monotheism is not possible 
for any other than a spiritual Religion. Any or all material ob- 
jects could not fulfill the Ontological Idea. The mind is con- 
stantly asserting its superiority to material things ; how then, could 
it indefinitely look to them as masters ? " By an instinct earlier 
than any history can trace man sets the power in and behind 



8 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



phenomena on his side. " 1 This is reason's reaction upon experi- 
ence. We may expect, therefore, and the facts of anthropology 
do not disappoint our expectations, that we shall find in Religion 
certain internal emotions with their ideas and a constant effort on 
the part of the intellect to adjust the rest of experience to harmo- 
nize with these ideas. It is the effort to adjust the rest of experi- 
ence which gives rise to the theoretical elements of Religion and 
causes it to halt in halfway places. A Theodicy is needed at 
almost every turn of life. 

Construction of Proofs. — The events which call for a Theodicy 
also point to Atheism as a possibility. This fact may have given 
an impulse to the construction of proofs, which does not begin 
until a late stage has been reached in the development of religious 
thought. The basis of the proofs is found, either, in the nature of 
the universe, yielding the Cosmological and Teleological arguments, 
the nature of the soul, giving the Psycho-physical proof, or the 
the nature of Being leading to the Ontological idea. Our interest 
in this latter form of proof arises, from its internal and immediate 
nature, and the fact that it directs attention inward, thus preparing 
the way for the discovery of consciousness with its contents. We 
also find that " it expresses that impulse which we experience 
toward the supersensuous, and that faith in its truth which is the 
starting point of all religion." 2 This impulse toward the super- 
sensuous is such a practical element of life that it puts the mind 
always on the alert to verify its experiences, and, whatever other 
things experience may discover in the world of facts, reason con- 
tinues its search for the Object of Religion. 

In the following chapters some attention will be paid to the 
Theories of Knowledge which recognize the chasm between thought 
and things ; and, it will also be necessary to inquire further con- 
cerning the nature of ideas and their relation to Reality. In 
this connection the speculative religious ideas which have grown 
up in connection with various concepts of being w T ill serve as 
illustrations of our theme. In the second part the Psychology 

Wallace, "Gifford Lectures," p. 193. 

2 Lotze, " Outlines of a Philosophy of Eeligion," p. 12. 



INTRODUCTION. 



9 



of the Eeligious Emotions will be drawn upon to support that part 
of the proof which connects with experience. And a third part 
will indicate the relation of the Ontological Idea to action and 
show the bearing of the entire discussion upon the Problem of 
Conduct and Life. 



PART I. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 

I. 

Historical Survey. 

A brief historical sketch will be useful, in setting our topic in 
its connection with other methods of knowledge. The analysis of 
consciousness, in the preceding chapter, revealed the subjects to 
which an a priori proof stands related. The idea must be sup- 
ported by a theory of knowledge, the emotion demands a psycho- 
logical support and the intention of the idea belongs to a theory 
of motives or ethics. Let us see, now, what the actual fate of the 
argument has been. 

When Augustine said : " There must be a truth. For if you 
deny there is a truth, you affirm there is no truth ; and thus you 
contradict yourself. The sum total of truth, conceived as a unity, 
is, however, the very essence of God," he was evidently preparing 
the way for Anselm' s discovery. The preparation, however, was 
purely in method, not in substance. Augustine might be called 
the father of the introspective method. It was he who first forced 
doubt to pay tribute to certainty. And, by directing attention to 
the immediacy of consciousness, he furnished a method which, in 
the hands of Anselm and Descartes, prepared the way for valuable 
discoveries. 

The relation of the Ontological Proof to consciousness is made 
very clear in the preface to the Proslogion. 1 There the author 
declares : " I began to inquire whether it might not be possible to 
find in a single argument, which being complete in itself, would 

1 Anselm, " Proslogion Preface," translated by Maginnis, Bibliotheca Sacra, 
1851. 

10 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 11 



need the aid of no other for its confirmation, and which alone 
would suffice to prove that there is indeed a God, that He is the 
supreme good and that He is in need of nothing — an argument 
sufficient to prove all that we are accustomed to believe concern- 
ing the Divine nature. . . . But when I endeavored to banish 
this thought entirely, lest, by occupying my mind in fruitless 
search, it might detain me from my other studies in which I might 
make some useful progress, then it began to press itself upon me 
the more with a kind of importunity. In the very conflict of my 
thought, that presented itself to me which I had despaired of 
finding." 

The point of interest in this rather long quotation is the likeness 
it shows to what might be found in the expression of any scientific 
consciousness. The same restlessness and sense of compulsion is 
apparent which frequently anticipates discovery. It is true that 
Anselm 1 himself regarded his discovery as an " illumination.'' He 
said : " Thanks be unto Thee, O Lord, thanks be unto Thee, that 
which I at first believed through thine own endowment, I now 
understand through thine illumination, even were I unwilling to 
believe that Thou art, I cannot remain ignorant of thine exist- 
ence." We are not concerned, however, with his interpretation 
of his experience. The term religious consciousness was unknown 
to him and belongs to a more fully developed psychology. But 
his description of his inner experience is exceedingly interesting. 
It shows that to him at least the Proof had an emotional and re- 
ligious as well as a logical significance. 

Without repeating the argument as stated in the Proslogion and 
expounded in the reply to Gaunilo, let us note that the judgment 
" existet ergo ... in re," is analytic. Iu other words existence is 
a part of the content of the concept of the most perfect being. 
This statement is not introduced here for the sake of discussion, 
disputed as it is, but as a point of contrast in making the transi- 
tion from Anselm to Descartes. For while it is true that Des- 
cartes asserts : 2 " That we may validly infer the existence of God 

1 Anselm, " Proslogion," C. 2, end. 

2 Descartes, " Principles of Philosophy," trans. hyJ. Vietch, p. 199. 



12 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



from necessary existence being comprised in the concept we have 
of Him," he still regards it as an inference and proceeds to follow 
the clue of causality. He says : 1 " The greater objective perfec- 
tion there is in our idea of a thing the greater also must be the 
perfection of its cause." The bald realism of the cartesian 
dualism here begins to shine through. In the third Meditation, 
also, after stating what the idea of God includes, he adds : 2 " The 
more attentively I consider them the less I feel persuaded that 
the idea I have of them owes its origin to myself alone." Thus 
in Descartes' hands the Ontological Proof began to assume an a 
posteriori character. 

This fact is the more remarkable when we consider the Carte- 
sian method. He was the philosopher par excettans of conscious- 
ness. In this he may have been guided by Anselm and Augus- 
tine but the important fact is " that he reached by way of doubt 
the principle of self consciousness and made it the starting point 
of his system." 3 The value of this principle we will have occasion 
to note later in this connection ; we may simply remark here that 
it at first lent itself to Rational Psychology rather than Religion. 
It was Descartes, then, who began the preparation for the study of 
the psychological relations of religion, who, also, perverted the 
Ontological Proof to the channel of Speculative Religious thought. 

The three philosophers who directly succeeded Descartes were 
Locke, Spinoza and Leibnitz, the great representatives of empiri- 
cism, Pantheism and individualism. Locke gave up the Onto- 
logical Proof along with innate ideas, Spinoza turned it to the 
service of speculative Pantheism, and Leibnitz alone made any 
useful contribution to it. He said : 4 "It proves that assuming 
that God is possible He exists." In other words he introduced 
the principle of non-contradiction. " Being," according to Leibnitz, 5 
" is that the concept of which, involves something positive, or that 
which can by us be conceived, provided that which we conceive is 

1 Descartes, " Principles of Philosophy," trans, by J. Vietch, Sec. XVII. 

2 Descartes, " Principles of Philosophy," p. 125. 

3 Descartes, " Principles of Philosophy." Introduction, p. 24. 

* Leibnitz, "New Essays," Bk. 4, ch. 10, p. 540. 

5 Leibnitz, "New Essays," Bk. 4, ch. 10, p. 717. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 



13 



possible." Most important of all lie worked out the demonstra- 
tion according to the principle of non-contradiction that the con- 
cept of God is possible and concludes that the a priori proof of 
his existence is valid. 1 

The argument, with the names most closely identified with it, is 
now before us. Its requirements have not been satisfactorily ful- 
filled. This is all that an historical survey needs to show. One 
or two further facts, however, are of interest. In the first place 
a long list of celebrated names could be arrayed in favor of the 
cogency of this form of proof. They have accepted it in the 
interest of speculative inquiry either Theistic, Deistic or Panthe- 
istic. On the other hand Empiricists and the transcendental 
Idealists have consistently rejected it. In a general way it might 
be considered as acceptable to theologians and worthless to scien- 
tists. Our position is that neither dogmatism nor scepticism has 
grasped its full significance as an expression of the religious con- 
sciousness. Its original relation to practical religious experience 
has been forgotten. This is especially apparent in Kant's criti- 
cism. He included the Ontological Proof along with the Cosmo- 
logical and Psychophysical arguments under the Transcendental 
Dialectic. They are exercises of pure reason. Having performed 
this feat by what he had well named Transcendental Topic, he 
had rendered all alike sufficiently fruitless. Nevertheless by a 
method precisely similar to that followed by Anselm although 
infinitely narrower, he arrived at an Ontological proof of the 
existence of God, by way of the Practical Reason. Paulsen, in 
his recent life of Kant says : 2 " Whoever ascribes absolute intel- 
ligible reality and unity to the intelligible world, naturally cannot 
deny the Ontological proof of the existence of God." Kant's 
criticism applies to the proof, therefore, only in its speculative 
and not in its practical capacity. Yet, the weight of Kant's 
influence in the last half of the nineteenth century no doubt, did 
much to cause the Ontological Proof to be abandoned as a support 
of Speculative Theism. 

^rdmann, "Lib. Op. Philos.," pp. 443-445. 
2 Paulsen, "Life of Kant," p. 223. 



14 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



On the other hand the progress of the psychological and anthro- 
pological study of religion together with the observations of con- 
sciousness and the processes of religious development are forcing 
a return to this method of proof. Mr. A. E. Taylor claims 1 that 
" the religious experience in its permanent essence is an insepar- 
able element in a comprehensive human experience of the world " 
and " in the sense that the claims of religion to represent an in- 
tegral element in a full human experience of the world is justified 
by the facts of life, the ' Ontological Proof ' seems valid and 
irrefragible." 

Our Problem now is before us with a sufficient outline of its 
historical connections. It is high time to address ourselves to the 
task we have outlined. The first part of the undertaking must 
be to find a self-consistent concept of being. The way at this 
point has been prepared for us by Professor Royce in his analysis 
of the four historic concepts of being and we will thankfully ac- 
cept his assistance. 2 

II. 

Concept and Being. 
Common sense perceives a difference between thought and 
things. The impression and the object which gives the impression, 
the idea and the ideate, what Anselm meant by " esse in intel- 
lectu " and " esse in re " or whatever terms may be used to express 
the difference, it is sufficiently determined. It was this difference 
which Anselm appeared to disregard when he passed from the 
" id quo majus, etc.," of his thought to the " Hoc es Tu " of his 
experience. The question arises — how is this procedure to be jus- 
tified ? How can an object discovered by the mind ever be recog- 
nized as identical with an object known by experience? The 
answer to this question is far from being easy, it constitutes the es- 
sential difference between Realism and Mysticism, Critical Rational- 
ism and Idealism. It may be well at the beginning of our discus- 

1 A. E. Taylor, "The Problem of Conduct," pp. 443-444. 
2 Boyce, " The World and the Individual," Vol. I. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 15 

sion to set before ourselves briefly the meaning of these four 
theories of Being as Professor Royce has defined them. 

1. Realism asserts that Being is independent of ideas. 

2. Mysticism defines Being as an absolute and simple unity 
which quenches thought through the presence of a single and ab- 
solutely immediate truth. It is a theory of the immediacy of true 
knowledge. It identifies Being with the true meaning of ideas. 

3. Critical Rationalism is an attempt to identify the validity of 
the idea with the true being of the fact defined by the idea. 

4. Idealism affirms that " Reality is a will concretely embodied 
in a life." "The object according to this theory is only the com- 
pletely embodied will of the idea." What is, presents the fulfill- 
ment of the whole purpose of the very idea that now seeks 
Reality. 1 

Realism. — With these definitions to guide us let us begin our 
examination of the various theories of knowledge which attempt 
to answer our question. Realism is the first to demand attention. 
It takes either the form of monism or pluralism. As an example 
of monistic Realism we may turn to Spinoza. He represents 
reality as one substance with its two attributes, thought and exten- 
sion. Now hear what he has to say : 2 " So long as we consider 
things as modes of thinking, we must explain the order of the 
whole of nature . . . through the attribute of thought only. And, 
in so far as we consider things as modes of extension, we must 
explain the whole of nature through the attribute of extension 
only." Thus thought and extension follow two parallel lines 
which meet only in infinity. The question then arises — " How 
can any one be sure that he has ideas which agree with their ob- 
jects ? " 3 To this question he replies : " Truth is its own stand- 
ard." The real answer, however, is the very substance of Pan- 
theism : " Our mind, in so far as it perceives things truly, is 
part of the infinite intellect of God ; therefore, the clear and dis- 
tinct ideas of the mind are as necessarily true as the ideas of God." 

1 Royce, " The World and the Individual," I, pp. 143, 227, 355, 359. 

2 Spinoza, "Ethics," Part II, Prop. VII, note. 
3 Spinoza, "Ethics," Part II, Prop. 43, note. 



16 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



In other words, God serves the purpose of a clearing house of 
ideas. This thought permeates Spinoza's discussion of the nature 
and origin of the mind. But it is scarcely necessary to say that 
we would search in vain in our consciousness to find anything 
which would correspond with this purely speculative theory of 
knowledge. 

The pluralistic branch of Realism is represented by the Em- 
pirical School of thought. Certain matters of fact are assumed 
and ideas are derived from them in the course of experience. 
According to Locke : " The understanding does not have the 
least glimmering of any idea which it doth not receive from sensa- 
tion or reflection." 1 This renders the concept dependent upon 
the object. Hume, however, says with regard to the impressions 
received by the senses : " It will always be impossible to decide 
with certainty, whether they arise immediately from the object, or 
are produced by the creative power of the mind, or are derived 
from the Author of our being." 2 And in the chapter on the Idea 
of Existence he adds : " We never really advance a step beyond 
ourselves, nor can perceive any kind of existence but those per- 
ceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass." These 
then are the limits of Empiricism, Locke deriving all ideas from 
sensations and reflection and Hume shutting up all experience to 
perceptions. 

There is no hope then of finding an answer to our question 
either in Monistic or Pluralistic Realism. Thought and things 
stand independent of each other. As we have already seen the 
monistic answer is given at the expense of Pantheism. The 
Religion of empiricism is even worse. It banished the idea of God 
to the realm of pure reason where it survived as a form of meta- 
physical speculation. Locke and Hume both gave up the Onto- 
logical Proof, the one embracing a Cosmological or Teleological 
argument and the other abandoning all proofs. Religion under 
these circumstances lost its experimental significance and became 
an affair of Reason. Locke's Epistemology was necessarily fatal 

'Locke, "Essay on the Human Understanding," p. 84. 
2 Hume, " Treatise of Human Nature." 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 



17 



to Natural Religion which rested upon a theory of innate ideas 
and Hume's Scepticism was subversive of all Religion. 

Such a theory is not only destructive for Religion ; it would 
destroy the entire unity of the universe itself. If an idea and an 
object are entirely independent entities they can and must exist 
each without the other else their independence is an illusion. 
" They have nothing in common/' says Royce, " neither quality 
nor worth, neither form nor content, neither truth nor meaning* 
No causality links them." And if this is true of the relation of 
concept and reality in a sensible world it must be equally true of 
an intelligible world. Concept and reality cannot exist in inde- 
pendence. 

Mysticism. — If the facts of life in any way justified the theory 
of Mysticism it would not be necessary to continue our investiga- 
tions further. The immediate intuition of Reality would refute 
all gainsaying. Such a theory, however, is out of harmony with 
both history and experience. Try as man does, he so far has not 
been able to cease either his fragmentary method of perception or 
" his deadly doing." We have to take life as it is and the great 
task is to make it what we would like it to be. The Ontological 
Argument, therefore, acts as a corrective to Mysticism in that it 
shows due regard for experience and God's revelation of himself 
to man in the progress of history. The short way from concept 
to Being by means of intuition has not, so far, been successfully 
traveled. 

Critical Rationalism. — The discriminating intellect of Kant 
perceived the strength and weakness of Realism ; he, therefore, 
sought to escape the difficulty by weaving together Empirical 
Realism with Transcendental Idealism. This combination ren- 
ders his system that much harder to understand. In the very 
beginning of the Critique of Pure Reason he links experience 
with sensation. At the same time he finds in experience other 
kinds of knowledge which must have their origin a priori. In 
addition to these two kinds of knowledge Reason introduces a 
third by means of concepts to which experience can never supply 
corresponding objects. This threefold division of the kinds of 



18 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



knowledge to which there must correspond a like division in 
the knowing subject constitutes the foundation of Kant's great 
work. Having once established this division it is easy to proceed 
backward and forward from Empirical Realism to Transcendental 
Idealism. The understanding combines the facts of experience 
into a world which is absolutely phenomenal and therefore 
transcendental. At the same time the possibility of experience 
determines this phenomenal world to such an extent that it may 
be called empirically realistic. In other words, Kant never got 
beyond the boundary line drawn by Hume which limits knowledge 
to perception. 

It was without question a scientific procedure on the part of 
these two great thinkers to isolate a faculty of the mind and ex- 
amine it alone ; but, by so doing they severed its relations and 
rendered it to that extent mutilated. If we remember this fact 
when we are examining Transcendental Idealism we shall not be 
so easily carried along by its plausibility. Let it once be admit- 
ted, for example, that the possibility of experience is determined 
by sensation and the understanding, and that the concept of God 
is an ideal of Pure Reason, by which we understand the formal 
sphere of thought, then the possibility of giving a content to the 
concept of God is given up. Such an admission forever destroys 
the possibility of a connection between the God of Reason and the 
God of Religion. To say " Hoc es Tu " is always precluded. 
But when we remember that all experience has a validity accord- 
ing to its kind and that one faculty cannot stand alone, the 
severed connection is reestablished again. 

Now let us see how Kant attacks the Anselmic problem. How 
does he relate concept and reality ? Take a passage in which he 
is speaking of objects of sense. He says : 1 " Hitherto it has 
been supposed that all our knowledge must conform to the ob- 
jects ; but under that supposition, all attempts to establish any- 
thing about them a priori, by means of concepts, and thus to en- 
large our knowledge, have come to nothing. ... If the intuition 
had to conform to the constitution of the objects, I do not see 

1 Kant, " Critique of Pure Eeason," p. 693. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPTSTEMOLOGY. 



19 



how we can know anything of it a priori ; but if the object con- 
forms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I can very 
well conceive such a possibility." 

The burden of this argument is to show that since the mind 
introduces a priori concepts into objects of knowledge, therefore, 
these objects so far as known constitute phenomena and the thing- 
in-itself — the Real — is unknown. The conclusion is that "the 
unconditioned must not be looked for in things so far as we know 
them but only in so far as we do not know them." The phe- 
nomenal world embracing every possible object of knowledge is at 
hand, and outside and beyond the reach of experience stands the 
unconditioned constituting the intelligible world. In the Kantian 
epistemology knowledge is limited absolutely to the realm of 
concept and on the other hand Reality embracing the intelligible 
world is unknowable. At the same time Kant ever regarded the 
manifold of objects composing the phenomenal world as objects of 
experience. And while these objects of experience and possible 
experience are not to be taken as things-in-themselves they are 
none the less real. In this latter sense Kant called himself an 
empirical Realist. But in the sense that all knowledge is phenom- 
enal he called himself a transcendental Idealist. Such a theory 
is an advance upon pure Realism. It introduces a relation be- 
tween concept and reality in the phenomenal world even if it does 
deny the possibility of communication between the Noumenal 
and Phenomenal worlds. It requires of a concept that it must be 
valid, that the concept and its object must agree, though both 
concept and object are alike phenomena. 

This then is the answer which Critical Rationalism gives to our 
question. It has received a tolerably general acceptance but not 
without hesitation. We are vaguely conscious of its insufficiency. 
The question asked by Spinoza " How can we know? " is avoided 
by limiting the sphere of knowledge. Therefore in spite of his 
transcendental Idealism Kant continued to be a Realist. The 
ding an sich for him was ever an independent Reality. When 
these facts concerning the Kantian theory of knowledge are settled 
in our minds we are prepared for his criticism of the Ontological 



20 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



Proof. In such a system an ens realissimum could be necessary 
only as a formal condition of thought. It is a purely regulative 
concept. The conclusions concerning a greatest conceivable being 
are rational deductions of logic. But when an account of reli- 
gious experience is demanded the system breaks down as Kant 
was conscious of its break down in the presence of a categorical 
imperative. The Ontological Proof therefore has this advantage 
that while it does connect with the Ideal of pure reason it also 
connects with the conscious experience of a Religious life. 

Kant's Criticism. — Let us look now at Kant's criticism of our 
Proof in the light of what we have here stated. He begins by 
asserting 1 that " the concept of an absolutely necessary Being is a 
concept of pure reason, a mere idea, the objective reality of which 
is by no means proved by the fact that reason requires it." Then 
he proceeds to inquire concerning the conditions which make it 
necessary to consider the nonexistence of a thing as absolutely 
inconceivable. The inadequacy of examples of absolute necessity 
such as that a triangle must have three angles is immediately ap- 
parent. The necessity is in the judgment not in the things. 
There is no contradiction in admitting the nonexistence of both 
the triangle and its angles. This is true, but to conceive of the 
nonexistence of the concept of a triangle when it has once been 
conceived is not possible. The reality of the triangle may be 
dropped but not the reality of the concept. On the other hand 
the very peculiarity of the Ontological concept is that we cannot 
conceive the nonexistence of either the concept or its object. 
Kant persists in putting the concept of God into the same category 
with the concept of things while the very nature of such a concept 
requires that it should be individual and not general, singular and 
therefore without comparison. The analogy of triangles, real and 
possible Thaler s or mountains and valleys will not hold, for in the 
case of triangles we are dealing with mathematical concepts which 
are empty of content and in the case of mountains we are dealing 
with a general concept with a possible content, while in thinking 
of God we are dealing with an individual concept which must 

^ant, "Critique of Pure Keason," p. 477. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 



21 



have a real content. To conceive an individual concept without 
an object is impossible. So soon as the object disappears it is a 
general concept. I have already affirmed that the proposition — 
God exists — is an analytical judgment. When I make this asser- 
tion according to Kant I am compelled to determine whether the 
concept is God or whether I deduce his existence from internal 
possibility. In its purpose and intention my concept is God but 
that is not enough. Consciousness reveals to me that something 
exists. Anything is an ens realissimum in comparison with non- 
existence. The greatest conceivable being therefore is a real being 
because no figment of the imagination is so great as what is real. 
To be sure such an argument does not take us beyond Pantheism 
so far as the content of our idea is concerned but it gives us a foot- 
hold in Reality, and Religious experience must furnish a content 
to the concept. I am willing to admit therefore that for matters 
of fact in general every proposition involving existence is synthet- 
ical but I still assert that the concept of Absolute Being involves 
existence. To be more explicit our knowledge of things depends 
upon the possibility of experience but for our knowledge of self as 
Descartes discovered and our knowledge of God according to 
Anselrn's argument we are thrown back upon consciousness as an 
original faculty. 

In this examination of Kant we have allowed ourselves to 
become involved in the same speculative method which we have 
deprecated. This, however, is unavoidable in this part of our 
subject, the Proof must be sustained or it will have no place for a 
practical content. If Critical Rationalism does not tell us how to 
pass from concept to reality we do not therefore give up in despair. 
One favorable sign also is here to be noted. The critical philos- 
ophy is psychological. It looks for the possibilities of knowledge 
within, in the precincts of the mind. If this at first appeared to 
be fatal to Religion it was only apparently so. Religion also is 
within. It too has experiences which come clamoring into the 
manifold of phenomena. An increased attention to Psychology, 
therefore, could not fail to uncover the religious precincts of the 
soul. When we have finished our inquiry concerning concept and 
reality this subject will be attended to at greater length. 



t 

22 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



Idealism. — Realism with its impossible independence of con- 
cept and object has failed to help us. Critical Rationalism sug- 
gests that the concept must be valid for the reality which it rep- 
resents but it shuts up concepts to sense and understanding thus 
circumscribing knowable phenomena. Mysticism on the other 
hand depreciates the usefulness of experience. We must turn, 
therefore, to Idealism as a last resort. But before listening to the 
answer of Idealism concerning the relation of concept and Reality 
let us revert to our analysis of a religious consciousness. We 
there discovered three original factors. Every religious emotion 
is inseparably combined with an idea. Fear and faith alike sub- 
tend the idea of an object to which they are directed. And every 
idea enfolds a purpose, a meaning, an intention or a will. It is 
at heart an intention with an end in view. With this threefold- 
ness of religious consciousness before our mind we are prepared 
more completely to study the relation of concept to Being or the 
religious idea to its Object in the light of Idealism. 

In the first place Idealism holds that an Idea is related to its 
object. The object itself may be material or imaginary, it may 
be sensible or only intelligible but whatever it is, some tie must 
connect it with its concept. And in the second place this theory 
holds that no objects stand alone. In some way or other there is 
a unity of all things — a linkedness of all facts. Mere likeness, 
then, is not a sufficient tie to connect an idea with its object. Two 
things as like as coins struck from the same die may exist in ab- 
solute independence. In the third place then, Idealism finds the 
only sufficient account of the relation of the object and the idea 
in the purpose of the idea. It is the intention of the idea both 
to seek its object and to seek its point of likeness to its object. 
It is true that the object does determine the idea. It is the will 
of the idea to be determined but just because of this relation the 
idea and the object cannot exist independently. 

Experience. — This brings us to the realm of experience. So 
long as we are dealing with the objects of sense the object deter- 
mines the idea in its validity. But experience reveals the impor- 
tant fact that the object found never fully satisfies the meaning of 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 



23 



the idea. The possibility of experience therefore rather than the 
experience itself constitutes the determining power of objects over 
ideas. And since the idea has a purpose it can never find an ob- 
ject completely fulfilling the requirement of validity until it finds 
that purpose manifested in a vital reality. In other words the 
idea is the expression of a finite self seeking its fulfillment in an 
Absolute Self. And " the Being to which any idea refers is sim- 
ply the will of the idea more determinately and more completely 
expressed." 1 " The finite idea does seek its own Other. It con- 
sciously means this Other. And it can seek only what it con- 
sciously means to seek. But it consciously means to seek precisely 
that determination of its own will to singleness and finality of 
expression which shall leave it no Other yet beyond, and still to 
seek." 

Let us see now how this conception of the relation of Concept 
and Being agrees with the argument of the Ontological Proof. 
The idea there is called — a id quo majus cogitari nequit," the 
greatest conceivable Being. The purpose of this idea is to find its 
object, its Other. It turns to the God of religious experience and 
says " Hoc es Tu. " In other words it identifies the God of faith 
with the God of Reason. Experience furnishes a content for the 
concept of God just as truly as experience furnishes a content for 
any finite reality. The process is precisely the same, the only 
difference is in the faculties involved. By this I mean that every 
experience is fragmentary. It only partly fulfills its concept. The 
possibility of experience is the only complete determination of a 
finite concept. And in a like manner religious experience does 
not fulfill the concept of God. It is only fragmentary. Never- 
theless it embodies the will of the Ontological idea. 

iRoyce, " The World and the Individual," p. 353. 



PART II. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND THE PSYCHOLOGY 
OF RELIGION. 

I. 

The Relation of Religion to Psychology. 
Religion and Psychology. — The examination of the various 
theories of knowledge brought out the fact that the concept of a 
most perfect being is dependent upon religious experience for its 
content. It is necessary therefore to inquire what this experience 
is and to listen to the evidence of Psychology concerning its worth. 
The spheres of Religion and Psychology owing to their functions 
and subject matter always overlap. Every form of experience 
comes within the realm of Psychology and a Religion on the other 
hand without an experience is impossible. At the same time Re- 
» ligion precedes Psychology and furnishes the facts for its investi- 
gation. Religion is a part of conscious life and Psychology is a 
science which treats of the laws and forms and methods of con- 
scious life. 

In a certain sense it might be said that Religion has a Psy- 
chology of its own. As an inner experience it requires reflection 
and introspection, and to some extent it always attempts to give 
definitions to those inner powers and seats of the emotions which 
we think of under the general term, soul. On the other hand a 
more fully developed Psychology serves as a guiding principle for 
Religion. In this way the two react upon each other and very 
much depends upon which has the predominating influence. 
Buddhism furnishes an example of a Religion in which the Psy- 
chological element predominates. In its pure form it is little more 
than a Psychology. Christianity, on the other hand, is a Religion 

24 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



25 



which takes Psychology into its service. The Sacred Writings of 
the Christians and Jews show a deep psychological penetration. 
Body and spirit are distinguished, the value of the soul is declared 
and a valuable analysis of the inner life is apparent. But all this 
is in theservice of Religion and a part of religious develop- 
ment. 

It is quite another thing when all Religion is assumed to be 
pathological — "a sick man's dream." " The psychologist, ob- 
serving the dependence of mental states on bodily conditions " and 
seeing the various psychic phenomena which Religion invariably 
includes, may be led to conclude that it is altogether an internal 
matter and that he can account for it as a psycho-genetic phe- 
nomena. To a person floundering in the vortex of such a conclu- 
sion Professor James says : 1 "It is not the origin with which we 
are concerned, but the way in which it works on the whole." 
Such a severing of the fruit from the root, however, must strike a 
serious reader as a violent proceeding. At such a time the Onto- 
logical Idea appears as a regulative principle and directs attention 
to the necessary connections between things psychical and the 
ultra psychical. 

In the examination of the relation of the Ontological Proof to 
the various concepts of Being a large part of our effort was spent 
in an endeavor to rescue Religion from rationalism. We saw 
how the various theories of knowledge rendered religious thought 
fruitless by turning it into speculative channels. Materialism, 
Deism, Theism and Agnosticism have appeared as the outgrowth 
of speculative inquiry severed from experience. The Ontological 
Proof there furnished us a clue by which these speculative diffi- 
culties could be avoided. It joins together what we must never 
put asunder — religious thought and religious life. ISTow in the 
face of an attack by materialistic Psychology our Proof again 
serves us ; since, it links experience with thought as well as 
thought with experience. Professor Flint in the Baird Lectures 
says 2 of the a priori arguments : " They help us steadily to con- 

1 James, u Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 13. 

2 Flint, " Baird Lectures, Theism," p. 288. 



26 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



template and patiently to consider such abstract and difficult 
thoughts as those of being, absolute being, cause, substance, per- 
fection, infinity, eternity, etc." Such mental gymnastics no doubt 
have their usefulness in developing an athletic mind but they 
are about as valuable as learning the Shorter Catechism backward, 
so far as practical Religion is concerned. They are worse than 
that because they pervert what they seem to contemplate from its 
true significance. If we are seeking an ulterior value in the 
Ontological Proof, it is to be found in the Psychological turn it 
gave to thought and the relation it establishes between thought 
and experience. It is introspective, and when attention is once 
directed to that which is within, a large field is at once opened 
for investigation. It is true that the first fruit of this research 
was largely the logomachy of Scholasticism, but later Descartes 
searched deeper than the ideas with which the schoolmen quibbled 
and discovered consciousness itself, the connecting link between 
thought and Being. The close connection between this discovery, 
which is the starting point of modern philosophy and psychology, 
and the Ontological Proof could not have been accidental. This 
is apparent in the Meditations. Hear what he says : 1 " Is there 
any truth more clear than the existence of a Supreme Being, or of 
God, seeing that it is to his essence alone that existence pertains ? 
And although the right perception of this truth has cost me much 
close thinking nevertheless at present I feel not only as certain of 
it as of what I deem most certain, but I remark further that the 
certitude of all other truths is so absolutely dependent on it, that 
without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything 
perfectly." It was "the close thinking" called forth by the 
Ontological Proof which led by way of doubt to the discovery of 
consciousness and thus to the establishment of the truth itself. 
But Descartes' purpose was speculative rather than practical and 
instead of holding fast to the relation of consciousness and the con- 
cept of a most perfect being, he followed the concept to a cause 
which must be greater than its concept and used Consciousness as 
the starting point of a rational Psychology. 

1 Descartes, "Meditations," V, p. 148. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



27 



The Psychologists. — In this way Psychology was born of 
Religion and was separated from it. In the hands of Locke, 
Hume, Kant, et al, Psychology assumed the field of experience 
and religion was restricted to rational spheres of speculation. 
Hume classes himself with 1 " that Species of Philosophers which 
consider man in the light of a reasonable being and endeavor to 
form his understanding more than cultivate his manners. (Who) 
regard human nature as a subject of speculation, and with a nar- 
row scrutiny examine it, in order to find those principles which 
regulate our understanding, excite our sentiments, and make us 
approve or blame any particular object, action, or behavior." On 
the other hand he says : 2 " Examine the religious principles, 
which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely 
be persuaded that they are anything but sick men's dreams" 
Thus human nature was magnified and Religion despised. It was 
impossible that such conditions should continue. A better Psy- 
chology and a more appreciative conception of Religion have suc- 
ceeded and their relation to each other is increasingly helpful. No 
reverent student of Religion can refuse to welcome the contribu- 
tions of such psychologists as Wundt, Hoffding, James and Meyer. 
Their work is invaluable and no solution of the Problems of 
Religion is now to be expected without a thorough psychology of 
religious experience. 

One other point is to be noted concerning the relation of Reli- 
gion to Psychology. Various authorities on the Philosophy of 
Religion have endeavored to connect Religion with one or other 
faculty of the soul. Schleiermacher's definition 3 of Religion as 
an absolute feeling of dependence on God gave undue prominence 
to the emotional element of Religion. Deism and Rationalism in 
general magnify the intellectual element. Von Hartmann gives 
prominence to the will. Such expressions 4 as " Der religiose 
"Wille ist das A und Q aller Religion," or any definitions which 
give predominance to any particular faculty find a regulative in 

1 Hume, " Essays," Vol. II, p. 1. Greene and Grose. 

2 Hume, " The Natural History of Keligion," p. 362. 

3 Schleiermacher, " Der christliche Glaubenslehre," p. 3. 

4 Hartmann, " Keligions-philosophie," vol. 2, p. 55. 



28 



THE IDEA OP GOD. 



our theory which gives to each faculty its place and prominence 
in a religious life. 

II. 

Eeligious Experience. 

Introspection. — When Kant said 1 of the Ontological Proof : 
" It leaves all experience out of account and concludes entirely a 
priori from mere concepts, the existence of a supreme cause," 
he certainly was not wide enough in his generalization. If 
sensuous experience is intended, the truth of the assertion might 
be admitted ; but experience is as broad and possibly broader 
than consciousness and in this sense the Anselmic form of the 
proof is rather an appeal to experience. By its very nature it 
withdraws attention from the world and directs it inward. It is a 
conscious appeal to the soul for a knowledge of God. In other 
words the Ontological Proof necessitated the development of Psy- 
chology. Here again Anselm received the mantle of Augustine. 
In a pure spirit of literalism Augustine sought to vindicate the 
doctrine of the Trinity by careful introspection. If God had said 
" Let us make man in our own image." And " in the image of 
God created He him," then it is reasonable to search in man for 
the image of God. Such was the reasoning that led Augustine to 
give to the world his Be Trinitate. Without estimating the success 
of this work, so far as its object is concerned, we are much inter- 
ested in the worth of its method. It made inner experience the 
foundation of metaphysics. And Anselm was simply returning 
to this method when he sought in himself 2 "for a single argu- 
ment which would suffice to prove that there is indeed a God." 

In our analysis of consciousness we saw that emotions are in- 
separably linked with ideas. Without the idea of God religious 
emotions could not come into existence. " Kine Religion ohne 
Gottesforstellung die Gottesforstellung ist der bewusste Ausgang- 
spankt aller religiosen Funktion" is von Hartmann's 3 statement 

J Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason," p. 476. 
2 Anselm, " Proslogion," Int. 

3 Hartmann, " Religions-philosophie," Vol. II, p. 6. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



29 



of this truth. Now Religion itself is a fact. It is with us as 
certainly as any of the facts of conscious life. The religious 
emotions also are well determined elements of experience. We 
know them precisely as we know other forms of conscious ex- 
perience. Therefore the idea of God does not stand in isolation 
— a product of the rational faculty — but is inseparably yoked to 
conscious experience. We learned further in our study of ideas 
that they are vitalized by a purpose. An idea without an inten- 
tion does not arise. We must now appeal to experience to show 
that it is the intention, the meaning of the idea of God to mediate 
between religious experience and the existing Other of that ex- 
perience. Our method would have been more logical if we had 
taken up the religious experiences first and, after examining them 
in the light of Psychology, then had proceeded to our inquiry 
concerning the relation of the concept to being. But that method 
would not have been so [natural, since experience always pro- 
ceeds from the objective to the subjective. We attend to the 
object with interest long before the psychical functions come to 
our notice. And in a like manner a study of the development of 
Religion verifies the statement that the idea of God precedes the 
idea of self in consciousness. 

Consciousness. — Some of the steps in the development of Psy- 
chology in relation to Religion were noted in the last chapter. 
Our interest is centered in the connection of the Ontological Proof 
with this development. The nature of this proof requires intro- 
spection and while the attention of the mind is turned inward it 
finds ideas, such as the concept of a perfect being, but if such ab- 
straction is continued long enough it must perceive in addition to 
the ideas of the mind the fact of consciousness. This we are led 
to believe was what took place in the mind of Descartes. He 
was looking for a starting point which doubt could not remove — 
a truth which would act or abide as his fulcrum that he might 
move the world of thought. He found this truth in the intuitive 
knowledge of self — in consciousness. By this discovery of con- 
sciousness as the primary fact of knowledge he gave a valuable 
truth to the world and a great impluse to both Psychology and 



30 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



Religion. Henceforth experience of whatever nature requires a 
scientific treatment. Sensuous experience at first, very reason- 
ably, claimed attention. In the hands of the Empiricists it for a 
time appeared that this was the only experience worthy of atten- 
tion but consciousness is broader than sensation and it was impossi- 
ble that other forms of experience should not sooner or later take 
their place along with the other facts of life. 

Without specifying the source to which Religious emotions are 
to be traced they must be recognized as facts. They form a part 
of the sum total of Reality. They are forces which have to be 
reckoned with, they can be dealt with and measured. In speak- 
ing of religious emotions in this way we are classifying them along 
with the real as opposed to the conceptual phenomena of the uni- 
verse. As having ideas inseparably connected with them they 
belong to rational quantities but as moving active forces they be- 
long to the world of facts. The realm of religious experience is 
now open before us. 

Primary Facts of Consciousness. — There are two facts dis- 
covered by consciousness which resist further analysis. The first 
is existence and the second is finiteness and limitation. Affirma- 
tion and negation, I am, and I am limited, are the primary analyt- 
ical judgments of consciousness. These two facts of experience 
are the coordinates of all possible experience. In so far as I ex- 
ist under these conditions experience is necessary for me. On the 
other hand experience is impossible for nonexisting or an unlim- 
ited being. Thus it appears that a limited consciousness occupies 
some intermediate place between nonexistence and perfect being. 
Again consciousness reveals that the limitations of human nature 
are temporal and spatial in form. All human experience is sub- 
ject to these limitations. In content the limitation may be sensu- 
ous or nonsensuous, pathetic or antipathetic ; they may either 
help or hinder the conscious individual. This constitutes the re- 
lation of an individual personality to all that is without or beyond 
him. 

The distinction between the rational and material parts of a 
self is also a very early work of self-consciousness. The mind by 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



31 



means of its ideas transcends the limitations of the body. The 
ideas of the mind very definitely ally themselves with the non- 
sensuons limitations and seek to penetrate and master those which 
are sensuous. It is in this struggle for the mastery that Religion 
appears. To involve ourselves in the hopeless task of giving a 
terse definition of Religion is altogether outside of our purpose but 
it is within our topic to indicate that Religion in its psychological 
analysis is neither knowledge nor feeling nor will alone but that 
it subsidizes all these faculties in religious functions. It does not 
matter whether we accept this tripartate division of the faculties 
of the mind or follow some other division, it is the psychical con- 
sciousness which puts the mind in reciprocity with the world of 
sense and the religious consciousness discovers those facts and ob- 
jects with which Religion is concerned and relates the entire mind 
to them. The world is an object which experience accepts and 
identifies and reacts upon ; but, it has no finality in which a reli- 
gious consciousness can rest, for it is also subject to limitations. 
And a limited self, conscious of its own incompleteness, must seek 
beyond the world for the satisfaction of that lack which it knows 
in experience. 

Primary Religious Emotion. — Here then one of the primary 
religious emotions is discovered ; one that makes its appearance 
in primitive or undeveloped stages of religious life and is most 
prominent in the most highly developed religions. It is not fear 
and it is not faith. It is an emotion which arises from a limited 
consciousness possessed of ideas which transcend its limitations. 
It is that attitude of longing which precedes expressions of faith 
and worship — a reaching out for help, a quest for a helper in the 
struggle of life. Such an emotion must be traced back from its 
expression in the examination of low stages of Religion. In more 
cultured minds it gives utterance to the yearning cry : " As the 
hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, 
O God." It was to this emotion that Augustine gave a definite 
form when he said : " O Lord, Thou hast made us for Thyself, 
and our heart is restless, until it find rest in Thee." 1 The sacred 

Augustine, £< Confessions," p. 1, 



32 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



books of all religions are full of more or less definite cries of this 
kind. It is the conscious effort of an individual and limited self 
to escape the orphanhood of individuality, the restlessness produced 
by the consciousness or even the pain of limitations and the pur- 
pose of ideas to find their Other beyond these limitations. In this 
sense Religion must be as broad as humanity and all Religion is 
essentially, even if very indefinitely, monotheistic. Man is a 
religion-making being because he is a limited individuality and 
the limits which seem to hinder him become the stairway on which 
he ascends to communion and union with the unlimited. In other 
words where limits and ideas transcending those limits are com- 
bined in one being a Religion becomes a necessity. The limited 
one finding in himself ideas which go beyond * himself is in so far 
related to the Object which the ideas represent. The longing is 
for the confirmation of this relation. Thus the emotion which is 
still physical and expresses itself physically and the idea which is 
purely psychical and belongs to the nonmaterial representations 
of consciousness, almost coalesce, for the purpose of both the emo- 
tion and the idea is in the helpful relation of the Other of the idea 
to the need of the self. 

This emotion as it develops may take the form of fear or faith 
according to the predominance of the limitations or the idea in 
attention. It may selfishly concern itself with its own welfare or 
generously take thought for the unlimited to which it belongs. It 
may be submissive or defiant according to the temperament of the 
individual ; but whichever of these characteristics may belong to 
it, the root of such a religious experience so far as psychology is 
concerned is to be found in the limitation of the individual human 
life. 

We need not suppose that the Ontological Idea which our theory 
links with this primary religious emotion is necessarily definite or 
its concept completely analyzed. It is the very essence of our 
contention that an historical experience is necessary to give this 
idea a content and that nothing less than a perfect experience will 
complete its analysis. Nevertheless, the religious process of know- 
ing is not different from other processes of knowing. The simple 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



33 



sensation does not come into consciousness unless it is joined with 
a percept. The percept does not stand alone but determines a 
concept and experience never completely fills the concept. Neither 
does religious experience ever fully satisfy the Ontolpgical concept. 
There is, however, a content which may be derived from the mind 
in itself or may as well be derived from Reality itself. Either 
way its origin is equally mysterious. I refer to the beyond — all 
that a limited consciousness recognizes as beyond its limitations. 
Professor Max Miiller calls 1 it " the perception of the infinite." 
He finds it in space and time and causality or what Kant calls the 
forms of thought. According to both, these forms are psychical. 
They are a priori so far as experience is concerned. With this 
admission it is difficult to see how the former can sustain his prin- 
ciple, " Nihil est in fide quod non antea fuerit in sensu." But 
that is aside from our argument, it is the historic data with which 
he illustrates his thesis that interests us. The dawn, the nightly 
sky, clouds, trees and rivers not only might furnish " Theogonic 
Elements," 2 but they have furnished these elements as his exami- 
nation of many sacred books distinctly shows. These matters of 
fact in nature were each embraced by the infinite and being per- 
ceived as facts of experience carried the mind onward in its con- 
ception of the infinite. Thus we find the vague indefinite idea, 
perception of the infinite if you choose to call it so, but I prefer to 
reserve that term for the faculty by which we apprehend all that 
is not infinite, and the emotion made more intense by the very 
indefiniteness of the Object which arouses it. 

Shamanism and Divination. — Along with this primary emotion 
there are certain practices of primitive religions which tenaciously 
survive even in cultured societies, such as Shamanism and Divi- 
nation, which may well be noticed in this place. The two prac- 
tices along with their functionaries are not peculiar or surprising 
in the light of what we have just said. They reflect the two 
greatest limitations of humanity -r— a lack of power and a lack of 
foresight. The arts of the Shaman are used to constrain the un- 

1 Miiller, "The Gifford Lectures, 1888, Natural Religion," p. 188. 

2 Miiller, " The Gifford Lectures, 1888, Natural Religion," p. 148. 



34 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



seen powers to lend their aid to man. To make rain, to drive 
out inimical spirits or to give victory, will in so far, put the one 
aided beyond his limitations. Such contributions of aid are ever 
desirable. The methods by which it is thought that such aid 
can be constrained no doubt reflect crude anthropomorphisms ; 
but with that we are not concerned. And again, the uncertainty 
of the future is a time limitation which ever presses heavily on 
the understanding of humanity and those who feel these limita- 
tions seek to obtain from those who are not thus limited the 
secrets of the future, hence Divination. 

Idols. — But the question arises in connection with the inter- 
pretation of Fetichism — if we accept that as a primitive form of 
Religion — Why do people in that stage of culture seek a multi- 
tude of gods and make use of objects of an inferior order if they 
possess anything of the nature of an Ontological Idea ? Or how 
is it possible to say that all Religion is in a sense monotheistic 
when polytheism is in such cases so apparent? One might with 
as much reason ask why the savage hunts in certain fields and 
fishes in neighboring streams of a bounded territory. His limi- 
tations make it necessary. It is a temporary makeshift. He 
seeks help first from that which is nearest at hand. If " he sac- 
rificeth unto his net and burneth incense unto his drag " 1 and 
makes a god of the charred end of that which has made him 
warm, he is at least acknowledging that the drag and the wood 
have played a godlike part in extending the bounds of his limi- 
tations. But the very fact that the Animist multiplies the objects 
of his devotion and idealizes his fetish indefinitely until multi- 
plicity gives place to unity, as in the Pantheism of Hinduism, 
renders it evident, that no limited object satisfies that primary 
emotion of longing with its idea, which is at the root of all reli- 
gious experience. Without its idea this emotion cannot appear in 
experience and however vague or illusory it may be consciousness 
bears witness to the fact of its presence. It is possible and the 
history of Religion shows that it is a fact that in the undeveloped 
condition of the human understanding at various stages of its 

1 Habakkuk 1 : 16. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



35 



culture this longing and its idea attach themselves to this and that 
object, temporarily seeking satisfaction, but in no case is there 
evidence that in such conditions the mind finds rest. 

From these considerations we may conclude that an Animistic 
theory of the origin of Religion instead of confuting rather confirms 
the presuppositions of the Ontological Proof. Let it once be 
understood that the Ontological Idea is not definite and analyzed 
in every human mind but that it is an idea with an infinite capa- 
city for analysis and the difficulty in accepting it is removed. The 
one element of the idea, however, which is primary, is that it in- 
volves existence objective to the thinker, otherwise Religion and 
being itself and even consciousness might be denied. 

There are two fields to which the Ontological Idea may turn in 
its quest for its Other or object. One is the material world with 
its manifold forces and the other is the mind with its complex 
of phenomena. The combination of these two spheres is also pos- 
sible in religious thought. We have already seen how the nature 
worshiper as a temporary makeshift does obeisance to an inferior 
object. What object will become prominent in his pantheon is 
simply a matter of attention and a great step forward is taken when 
some superior man is fixed upon as the object of devotion and 
adoration. From henceforth the anthropomorphization of other 
objects of nature is an easy process, for the idea refusing to be 
satisfied with either the fetish or the hero as a final object of wor- 
ship, must continue the search further. 

The Gods. — In the choice of objects of worship the great facts 
and objects soon claimed attention. The myths concerning the 
sun god, the rain god, etc., can be traced back to the Akkadians. 
These larger objects of nature had entered into their pantheon 
long before the dawn of history. 1 These myths represent an in- 
teresting stage in the progress of a search for the Object of Religion 
in the external objects of nature. They show the constant reac- 
tion between the mind's conception of the infinite and its percep- 
tion of the finite. These two mental processes were constantly at 
work harmonizing the facts of limited experience with the concep- 

1 Tiele, ' ' History of Keligion. ' ' 



36 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



tion of what is beyond experience. At this point of religious 
culture two steps were possible and were actually taken. One 
was the deification of all objects, or Pantheism ; and, the other dis- 
pensed with the temporal limitations of thought and postulated 
immortality. This development could hardly be escaped where 
material objects were deified. The perishableness of objects and 
the conflicts of the forces of nature which gave material for the 
myths also indicated that these objects had temporal as well as 
material limitations. The death of the gods was always a possi- 
bility. But the mind having fixed upon the sky, the sun, the 
rain, etc., as objects of worship and at the same time perceiving 
their limitations, did not need to take a great leap when it com- 
bined all things into a Brahma. Its creed then becomes : " All 
this universe indeed in Brahma : from him it does proceed ; into 
him it dissolves ; in him it breathes." 1 To such a god immortal- 
ity may easily be ascribed. 

We must remember, however, that Pantheism is a philosophy 
rather than a Religion. Brahma was never worshiped in the all- 
absorbing way that Yahweh or Allah appeal to their worshipers. 
Neither has the intellectual love of a pantheistic deity which 
Spinoza suggested as the highest Religion appealed to humanity. 
All that the mind has been able to make of Pan is a great fetish 
which involves an appalling fatalism. 

Roman Religion. — The history of the Religion of Rome presents 
a striking example of the transition, which the Ontological Idea 
makes in its search for its Other, from the physical to the psy- 
chical field. The old gods, the objective gods, were still rever- 
enced but Mens, Virtus, Pudicitia, Fides, and other internal 
faculties and graces were introduced into their pantheon. Temples 
w T ere erected to these deities and they were adored along with 
the other gods. Max Miiller represents 2 that Regulus would 
rather die than dishonor Fides. And no doubt a similar religious 
motive prompted Yirginius to sacrifice his daughter rather than 
allow her allegiance to Pudicitia to be broken. Other examples 

1 Quoted by Dr. Ellinwood in " Notes on Comparative Religions." 
2 Miiller, "The Gifford Lectures, 1888, Natural Religion," p. 176. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



37 



might be cited but these are sufficient to indicate that the internal 
field is the ethical field of search for an object of religious worship. 

It will be better, however, to pursue our psychological in- 
quiries a little further before taking up this topic. 

Some of the higher forms of religious experience demand our 
attention in this connection. They do not differ in their final 
analysis from what we have already observed. The same con- 
sciousness of limitation and the same idealism is present accom- 
panied with a greater complexity and definiteness. 1 Such phe- 
nomena as 3fetanoia, Enthusiasm and Mysticism here claim our 
attention. These are experiences which are recognized as facts 
and forces in the world as well as in the lives of individuals. 
They have become constructive principles in determining the lives 
of men whom the world chooses to honor and as forces they have 
had a visible part in making history. In the conclusion of his 
Gifford Lectures, Professor James says : 2 " Religion includes . . . 
a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the 
form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and 
heroism. Also an assurance of safety and a temper of peace and, 
in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affection." 

Metanoia. — One of these experiences is named in the Gospels 
Metanoia 3 This significant word occurs so frequently in these 
sacred books that we may well believe that it indicates a charac- 
teristic experience. It also points out the mind as the part of the 
individual in which the experience takes place. The well-known 
meaning of metanoia is a change of mind with a corresponding 
change of character. In such an experience a moral element is 
involved. The limitations of a sensuous kind which require the 
help of a God of power have given place to limitations of a 

1 Professor James in his Gifford Lectures on "The Varieties of Religious 
Experience" and Professor Starbuck in his work on the " Psychology of Re- 
ligion," have made valuable collections of testimonies bearing on this topic and 
have subjected them to a psychological treatment, but we can only hope to make 
use of their conclusions in so far as they bear upon our subject. 

2 James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 485. 

3 1 have used the Greek word metanoia instead of its English equivalent 
repentance because the latter has a double significance. 



38 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



spiritual nature which require the help of a God of holiness. 
But in the case of this higher experience just the same as in the 
case of the lower experience the idea anticipates the experience 
and prepares the way for it. 

I can quite understand the psychologist's description of the 
brain's function in this process. That such a change of mind as 
is indicated by the term metanoia and is commonly known as 
Conversion, should be accompanied and accomplished by a trans- 
ference of the habitual center of personal energy ; that religious 
ideas, previously peripheral in consciousness, take a central place, 
and religious aims form the habitual center of energy is quite 
intelligible. All this, however, is simply descriptive. It tells 
what takes place without the how and why. Psychology, there- 
fore, simply adds its testimony. Something does take place. How 
peripheral religious centers come to exist and why their content 
when once illuminated lends a new zest to character, which com- 
mon sense chooses to esteem valuable, has not been made known. 
Neither is the cause of the transference discoverable among the 
mind's peculiar forces. It is not within the sphere of psychology 
to furnish an escape from idealism any more than it is within its 
sphere to solve the problem of consciousness itself. And in the 
problem furnished by religious metanoia we are again thrown 
back upon the law of the inseparable unity of experience and ideas. 
The God-idea has only taken a more definite form. Its moral 
character unfolding itself over against the moral limits which the 
individual's growing consciousness discovers. 

Let us see if such an explanation is consistent with our theory 
of the ,Ontological Proof. The psychologist has told us of the 
transference of centers of consciousness. The idea of a most per- 
fect being has occupied an inferior place in consciousness. Other 
orders of being and other purposes toward them have occupied 
the center of illumination, but the mind's readiness to occupy 
itself with that which is more perfect is a clue to the fact that its 
quest is the most Perfect. In the experience known as Metanoia 
the idea of God in the Christian's sense has received a greater 
illumination and the one who experiences the metanoia oppressed 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



39 



by his limitations is conscious of a transference of thought and 
affection from some inferior means of attaining his end to the 
superior means even to a fellowship and union with the unlimited 
Father. The consciousness of renewed strength accompanying 
this change becomes to the receiver an infallible sign of the reality 
of the Being to whom his idea led him. The purpose of the idea 
and the experience coincide. Such an one can truly say " Hoc es 
Tu Domine Deus noster." The relation is no longer looked upon 
as the relation between an idea and its other. The purpose of the 
idea is fulfilled. The relation is a fact — a living experience. In 
such a stage of religious culture the immediacy of Religion is found 
not only in the emotions of the worshiper but also in his relation 
to the Object of his adoration. 

This brings us to the threshold of mysticism. We are ar- 
rested, however, by the very nature of worship. Mysticism seeks 
to transcend worship by ignoring its two-fold nature. It aban- 
dons the progressive method of unfolding the idea of God to 
which our Ontological Proof admonishes us to adhere and seeks 
by intuition to grasp reality in its totality. Before speaking of 
this matter more fully let us attend to worship as a religious 
discipline. 

Worship. — This discussion is appropriate in this place because 
worship expresses the two-fold character of the highest religious 
experience. It manifests both sides of the consciousness of a 
soul which has entered into fellowship with the Divine and yet 
continues in a body of flesh. It has due regard for the " perse- 
verance of the saints " and the irresistible grace of God. " It is 
a mysterious thing," says Jonathan Edwards, 1 "and what has 
puzzled and amazed many a good Christian, that there should be 
that which is so divine and precious, as the saving grace of God, 
and the new and divine nature, dwelling in the same heart, with 
so much corruption, hypocrisy and iniquity, in a particular saint." 
And Paul who has set forth the doctrine of union with God in 
Christ in the greatest fulness, said 2 " We have this treasure in 

Edwards, " Works," Vol. 4, p. 4. 
2 2 Cor. 4 : 7. 



40 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



earthen vessels." Worship consciously expresses both these facts. 
It combines humility with exaltation. The worshiper is in fel- 
lowship with the more perfect or most perfect being and to that 
extent he has passed beyond his finiteness. Yet as an individual 
he is still finite and conscious of his limitations. As a Polytheist 
man sacrifices to his drag because the drag had extended his power 
of sustaining life, so as a Christian he says 2 in pious devotion, " I 
can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me/' an assumption 
that fellowship with his God transcends all finite limitations. 

Worship does not appear in this treatment as a primary reli- 
gious function. It is rather an attitude after the fact — a product 
of Religion. Nevertheless worship is a valuable activity and 
stands on the border line between religious and social functions. 
One cannot fail to be impressed with the similarity of the con- 
duct of courtiers, to that of worshipers. In fact the differenti- 
ation of rulers from deities is a late and to some extent an im- 
possible proceeding. Even in the highest religions the duties to 
rulers are enfolded in the duties to God. The man who has rev- 
erence for whatever helps him over an obstacle could not in reason 
overlook the duty he owes to his chieftain or ruler. But this is 
going outside of our sphere which is distinctly religious, it is 
more to the point to notice that worship and the spirit of worship 
as we find them in a religious life are altogether in harmony with 
our representation of the Ontological Proof. On the one hand 
they are rooted in experience and recognize the bounds of every- 
day life ; on the other hand they are ideal, reaching out with fear 
and faith to a more perfect if not the most perfect Being. Here 
we certainly have matter of fact. There is a great difference in 
range between the worship of a St. Francis or a Tolstoy and the 
worship of a peasant at a wayside shrine or the cringing of an 
animist before his fetish but in all that vast difference there is no 
by-way of escape from this two-fold nature of worship. The ex- 
perience and the idea live and die together. 

Saintliness. — It has been our effort up to this point to show 
that the a priori proof of the existence of an Object of Religion is 

2 Philippians 4 : 13. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



41 



in harmony with psychology and anthropology. These two 
sciences have been greatly developed in recent years and the facts 
which they have discovered must be accepted and affiliated in any 
theory of life. So far we have found no cause to abandon our 
theory on their account. There remains to be examined under 
the present topic what could be termed the development of saintli- 
ness. In its more exact significance saintliness means a life 
separated from the world and consecrated to the pursuit of godli- 
ness. It is my intention to use the word in the broader evangeli- 
cal sense of " growth in grace " — life in contact with the world 
and in communion with God. In this sense the knight as well 
as the hermit is a religious person and the unwarranted distinction 
between the sacred and the secular life is broken down. This is 
the form that Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, has 
taken at the present day. Religion is cultivated in and in har- 
mony with a life of affairs. Union and communion with God are 
accepted in the subjugation of a material world. Such a view of 
life is optimistic. Instead of looking upon the material world 
as antipathetic and subversive to piety it accepts all things, 
as servants to the soul, though they may be at times insubordinate. 
With such a view of life, development is almost a postulate. 
The conception of a metanoia which brings the soul into union 
with the Object of Religion in no wise dispenses with the process 
of development. The current theory of religious experience 
follows the analogy furnished by Biology in supposing that 
each religious life passes through the stages represented in the 
historic development of Religion. This analogy is no doubt over- 
worked but at the same time the development of saintliness is a 
well authenticated process. 

Our treatment of this form of religious experience falls in line 
with our treatment of worship and our entire theory. The idea 
of God stands over against an ever unfolding life but the un- 
folding of the religious life is always toward the God-idea which 
has anticipated it. Thus an ever-increasing knowledge of the 
content of the God-idea serves to make conscious of the manifold 
limitations of finite individuality and " growth in grace " is the 



42 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



process of making real the transcendence of limitations which 
faith has apprehended in the ideal. 

Crises. — A lack of knowledge concerning the psychology of 
religious experience has been a fruitful source of controversy on 
this point. What are known as crises in experience are more ob- 
vious and striking than the regular every day experiences of life. 
I refer to sudden conversions and deluges of enthusiasm. Like 
all extraordinary events such facts rivet attention. Those who 
build upon such experiences fail to recognize the cumulative proc- 
esses of the mind which are well known to the psychologist. 
Comforting as these extraordinary processes are, to the person 
who has realized them, and useful as they have been in the develop- 
ment of the religious life, we are compelled to look upon them as 
abnormal and to classify them with other well-known natural 
events of an unwholesome character. The healthy, religious 
mind finds that it does well not to expect a sudden flood of knowl- 
edge or of character stuff but to grow in grace and increase in the 
knowledge of the Lord. In such a growth experience and faith 
are the coordinates of knowledge. 

We have now examined some characteristic religious experi- 
ences. They are in no way out of harmony with what our inter- 
pretation of the Ontological Proof would lead us to expect. We 
have confined our attention perhaps too closely to the Christian 
Religion. This, however, is not intended as a disparagement of 
the science of Comparative Religion. Examples of metanoia 
and saintliness could as well be taken from Mohametanism or 
Buddhism. The results obtained no doubt differ but the process 
of Religion as an experience is in no way different. It would be 
interesting to push our investigations into an examination of the 
psychology developed along with Buddhism and the Yogi phi- 
losophy of Hinduism. There is a field of research open, also, to 
anyone who will classify the various expressions of religious emo- 
tions in the lower orders of human society and examine the ideas 
which give them vitality and potency. The greatest part of the 
service which psychology can give to a philosophy of religion and 
a proof of the existence of the Object of Religion is yet to be ren- 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



43 



dered, but it is gratifying to see that the tendency of thought at 
present is to compel this branch of science to render its full tale 
of service. And this tendency is in line with a return to experi- 
ence as a basis of knowledge in Religion as in other affairs. In 
this connection Professor James says : 1 " The inner state is our 
very experience itself ; its reality and that of our experience are 
one. A conscious field "plus its object as felt or thought of plus an 
attitude towards the object plus the sense of a self to whom the 
attitude belongs — such a concrete bit of personal experience may 
be a small bit, but it is a solid bit as long as it lasts ; not hollow, 
not a mere abstract element of experience, such as the object is 
when taken alone." By object he means the object of science : 2 
" To describe the world with all the various feelings of the indi- 
vidual pinch of destiny, all the various spiritual attitudes, left out 
from the description — they being as describable as anything else 
— would be something like offering a printed bill of fare as the 
equivalent of a solid meal." Religion makes no such blunder. 

Monism. — It is this recognition of the totality of experience 
which we hail as hopeful. The totality and oneness of reality 
appeals to us. There are advantages in taking isolated objects 
and viewing them in their isolation as though they contained 
finality, but such piece work is unreasonable if it has not in view 
the relations of the object even in the completest possible isola- 
tion. It is this very completeness, this most perfectness of being 
which the Ontological concept constantly holds before us. Thus 
Religious Experience is the door through which life enters into 
the knowledge of this most perfect temple of reality. 

III. 

Experience as Knowledge. 
Anselm adopted the principle " credo ut intelligam." This pre- 
cept contains an appreciation and a protest. It does not sever 
Religion and knowledge as Scepticism and Transcendental Ideal- 

1 James, " Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 498. 

2 James, " Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 500. 



44 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



ism do and it does not accept blindly the ecclesiastical "credo 
quia absurdum." The protest consists in an admitted restlessness 
under faith as a finality. Experience which includes faith has as 
its goal knowledge. Religion cannot be satisfactorily tied to an 
isolated faculty of a trinal facultied soul. It is not " a feeling of 
absolute dependence " alone and it is not " the will to live " alone 
much less is it " knowledge " in the Hegelian sense. Any attempt 
at a definition 1 along these lines must prove abortive. The entire 
being is a unit in a religious state. But this is not to deny that 
there is a religious function in each of the faculties of the mind 
taken individually. The contention of Abelard for the thesis 
" Ratio prsecedit fidem " was intended to free reason from the 
bondage of tradition. To the extent that this bondage was real 
the work of Abelard was valuable, but the reaction which he in- 
troduced soon passed to the other extreme of Rationalism. One 
of these extremes is as bad as the other. To be sure irrational 
tradition must be excluded. At the same time no intelligent phi- 
losophy of life can be constructed which severs rational from sensi- 
ble experience. I have all along interpreted Anselm's method as 
a natural method of proceeding from experience to knowledge. 
He discovered the identity of the idea of God in the intellect with 
the God of faith in experience. To deny one would be to doubt 
the other and to doubt consciousness is impossible. 

There are two very significant verifications of Anselm's method 
which remain to be noticed. In the first place it harmonizes with 
the fact of historic revelation and in the second place it serves as a 
regulative to Mysticism. We have two great human phenomena 
one a fact and the other a theory confronting and antagonizing each 
other. Mysticism has had a wide currency both in ancient and in 
modern times. It has doubtless exercised a more or less whole- 
some influence on the development of Religion but its claims are 
out of harmony with the facts of history. Its root is likely to be 
found in those floods of enthusiasm which we have had occasion 
to notice in the last chapter. Let us again postpone its discussion 
until we have given more consideration to Historic Revelation and 
Enthusiasm. 

iCaird, "Int. Phil. Eel." 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



45 



Revelation. — Every Religion has a history. It must be ad- 
mitted, however, that the sacred books of no other Religion can be 
compared with the sacred books of Christianity and Judaism in 
their identification of the revelation of the Object of Religion with 
the historic development of a nation and an individual. Take the 
life of Jesus and the history of Israel out of the Old and the New 
Testament and there remains a chaos. Buddha was an enlightened 
one who pointed out the eightfold path, the Vedas contain the 
principles of a philosophy, theogonies and ethical teachings are 
found in other sacred writings, but Christianity is a life and a his- 
tory. Lessing was one of the first to draw attention to this fact 
in his Education of the Human Race and its importance has been 
magnified along with the development theory of history. His- 
torical revelation goes along with the historical development of 
Religion. It is accumulated experience on the spiritual side of life. 

Such a theory of Revelation is verified by Psychology. A rev- 
elation in whatever way it is given must be received by the 
understanding and the understanding is limited by time, space and 
the categories. Whatever truths are received or communicated 
are subject to these forms. Neither does experience ever deny 
them and for this reason a revelation or a theory of revelation 
which is conformable to experience is most acceptable. Let us 
see how this applies in the examination of enthusiasm. 

Enthusiasm. — When we pass to the method of Revelations, the 
claims of experience take a manifold form. I use the word En- 
thusiasm in its etymological sense as broader than the theological 
term Inspiration. It signifies all that could be determined by the 
expression God-consciousness. A confused multitude of arahats, 
mahatmas, mediums, pythons, seers and witches rush to our imag- 
ination at the mention of these terms. Unless it is intended to 
abandon our search we must at this point again turn to psychology 
for a guiding hand. The reproach of the blatant atheist that all 
these creatures have experiences is immediately upon us. And it 
is unquestionably a fact that religions best and worst have not 
despised this fellowship. Visions, dreams, ecstatic states, epileptic 
fits, intoxications and all kindred psychical phenomena have been 



46 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



used by religiously disposed persons as a means of getting into 
contact with the unseen world. All sacred books and many sacred 
performances bear witness to these statements. And it is having 
fellowship of this character which gives some ground to those who 
class Religion with other manifestations of degeneration. How 
are we to meet the scoffs of those who make such charges? Cer- 
tainly neither with a denial nor an apology. 

In the first place putting aside the objectionable features of such 
manifestations of Religion we hold to their positive content. They 
bear witness to the presence of religious emotions and ideas. " He 
that cometh unto God must believe that he is." All of these 
efforts to get into contact with the spirit world are direct evidence 
of a belief in that world. The best answer, by way of illustra- 
tion ,. to those who deny that the Israelites believed in immortality 
is the story of the Witch of Endor. Such a bit of folk-lore out- 
weighs volumes of doctrine. And all those objectionable features 
such as necromancy, witchcraft and frenzy, possess such a kernel 
of veritable experience. They represent crude methods by which 
the idea seeks to fulfil its purpose by finding its Object. 

Methods of Enthusiasm. — Perhaps it will not be amiss to ex- 
amine some of these methods. The dream is no doubt the earliest 
mediumistic process. The Hebrew Sacred writings are true to 
nature in putting this method of revelation in its historic place as 
primitive. Abraham, Jacob and Pharaoh received revelations in 
dreams and Joseph achieved a reputation for w T isdom as a dream 
interpreter. In this respect the Israelites were not singular. I 
mention them because they incorporate this method of revelation 
in its historic place. But even Paul, a cultured religious spirit, 
did not despise the gate of dreams as a means of access to the 
spirit world. 

Dreams, however, do not offer a sufficiently pliant means of 
enthusiasm. A revelation is needed for a certain time and the 
dream power cannot be depended upon to furnish it. There were 
other methods early discovered by which religiously disposed 
minds sought to extend the limits of consciousness. One of these 
means was the use of intoxicants. The deification of Soma and 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



47 



Bacchus and the fact that Israelitish prophets 1 were open to the 
reproach that they prophesied through wine can scarcely be inter- 
preted in any other way than as an effort to obtain a revelation 
by stimulation. 

As a third method the mediumistic trance or ecstasy might be 
mentioned. The story of Balaam furnishes a primitive example. 
The means used in that particular case are not recorded but numer- 
ous devices are well known by which the mind can be physically 
transported. Weird music, dizziness produced by over-violent 
exercises as well as conscious control over rational consciousness, 
are known to accomplish the desired effects. The Yogi of India 
have worked these processes out experimentally and have devel- 
oped along with them a valuable psychological philosophy. To- 
gether with these experiences epileptoid phenomena are to be 
classed and possibly all pathological experiences. 

So much then for the facts. Any treatise on Anthropology 
would add to them indefinitely. That they produce much spuri- 
ous and self-contradictory material is certain. Nevertheless they 
belong to a sum total of world experience and cannot be indo- 
lently swept into the abyss. 

What then has psychology to say of these experiences and this 
matter of fact ? The first thing that must strike one in attending 
to these phenomena is that they all express an effort to extend 
the limits of ordinary consciousness. The temptation to do this 
is involved in dream and trance experiences. The development 
of experience proves that the same effects are obtainable in other 
ways, and this discovery having once been made the mind reason- 
ably attempts to make use of it in self-directed attempts to tran- 
scend barriers which stand as present obstacles. The senses do 
not discover to consciousness all of reality. If by way of illus- 
tration, we adopt a vibratory theory of perception and suppose 
that each of the senses run a certain gamut, it is a pure matter of 
physics to demonstrate that there are gaps between the gamuts of 
the senses. Sight is blind to certain light waves and hearing is 
deaf to certain sound waves. Thus for purely physical perception 

JMicah 2:11. 



48 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



consciousness is incomplete. Nothing could be more evident than 
that reality is larger and richer than consciousness, and any at- 
tempt to enlarge experience is, therefore, justifiable however irra- 
tional it may be in method. 

We must turn to specialists in the field of Psychology for a 
verification of this last statement. The subliminal region of con- 
sciousness cannot be ignored. Too many well-authenticated facts 
of experience arise in that region to forbid its being indifferently 
passed by. " It 1 is the abode of everything that is latent and the 
reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded and unobserved. 
It contains, for example, such things as all our momentarily active 
memories, and it harbors the springs of all our obscurely motived 
passions, impulses, likes, dislikes and prejudices. Our intuitions, 
hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions and in 
general all our nonrational operations come from it. It is the 
source of our dreams and apparently they may return to it. In 
it arises whatever mystical experiences we may have, etc." Thus 
Professor James describes the subconsious self. The entire sub- 
ject is more fully discussed in the recent work by Professor F. 
W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily 
Death. It is sufficient to say that the light of Psychology has 
served to verify the anticipations of Religion. In other words, 
Religion has not followed a phantom when its idea seeks to verify 
its Object. Its instinct at least was true in seeking in the sub- 
conscious regions of self for the intermediary or nexus between 
self and God. The discovery of the existence of the subconsci- 
ous self belongs to the last twenty years, and the scientific obser- 
vation of its facts is still in its infancy but so far its verifications 
are by no means subversive of what religious experiences have 
established. 

Tests of Enthusiasm. — To revert now to the somewhat disrep- 
utable collection of enthusiasts mentioned in this section, the 
question may be asked : If psychology accredits the phenomena 
of dreams, trances, visions and such like unrational phenomena, 
what clue can be taken to discern the true from the false and the 

1 James, " Varieties ofKeligious Experience," p. 483. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



49 



valuable from the worthless ? This is an important question in 
the development of the relation between experience and the 
Ontological idea. The religious life would simply be deluged if 
every dream and figment of a fevered brain were accepted as 
authoritative in rational life. Here, however, the pressure of the 
limitations of life serve a regulative purpose. Only those com- 
munications with the supersensuous world which aid in tran- 
scending limitations are valuable. They alone are accredited by 
truth. In other words, rational experience verifies the message 
of the prophets. Lying spirits are distinguished from true spirits 
by the event. In the remarkable tradition of Micaiah 1 and the 
four hundred prophets there was no recourse but to wait for the 
issue. Truth and value thus come to be the tests of enthusiasm. 
There is an analogy in the opening of the combination lock. 
The mind which sets the combination has a purpose and the per- 
son who opens the lock must arrive at the purpose of the other 
mind. This analogy at the same time is unfortunate for the rea- 
son that the purpose in the combination is intentionally obscure 
while the purpose of life is sympathetic and the seeker after 
the Object of Religion is consciously rewarded by each turn in the 
right direction. 

In these two ideas there are to be found the motive and cor- 
rective of Enthusiasm. In the first place there is the broad reality 
which sensibility only partially discovers and experience is al- 
ways bearing witness, through various phenomena, that a subcon- 
scious contact with this reality beyond the senuous contact is 
possible. The forms of enthusiasm represent developments of 
these subconscious methods. And in the second place truth and 
value serve as regulative principles which correct the extrava- 
gances of enthusiasm. The understanding is under a constant 
temptation to break away from the forms — time, space and the 
categories — which its nature imposes as the true method of expe- 
rience. This temptation is pressed by the subconscious self and 
the successes of Religion in discovering a content for the Idea of 
God give to it a certain amount of strength. 

1 1 Kings, 22. 



50 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



Mysticism. — It is a remarkable fact that the Founder of 
Christianity did not make use of any of the methods of enthusiasm. 
Dreams, theophanies, epileptic fits and rnetanoia have no place in 
his experience. The nearest approach to any of these processes 
is to be found in the accounts of His Baptism and Transfiguration, 
and of these He does not make mention in His teaching. The 
reason for this difference from other religious teachers is to be 
found in the peculiar claims of Jesus. His conscious relation to 
the Object of Religion was such that any method of communication 
would have been an interference. His life was a union with and 
revelation of the Father. The relation was such that He could 
truly say I and the Father are one. 

This relation has ever been the ideal aim of Mysticism. As a 
theory of knowledge mysticism magnifies intuition. It endeavors 
to come into direct contact with reality. The senses are condemned 
because of their errors and deceptions. The true method of knowl- 
edge is to know God and through him to know his works. The 
tempting possibilities of enthusiasm have given encouragement to 
Mysticism. This, no doubt, accounts for its appearance in so 
many widely separated centers of thought. It is not necessary to 
the development of our theme to enter into a detailed account of 
its methods and usefulness. Its weakness is its unnaturalness* 
It does violence to the progressive method of revelation both in 
life and in history. To know reality entirely and immediately 
and then, being creatures of the forms of thought, to fill in after- 
ward the details of experience would be to overturn all that is 
intelligible in human life. 

The Ontological Proof by giving due place to experience serves 
as a corrective to mysticism. No exponent of the a priori method 
would claim that the Ontological Idea is an intuitive apprehension 
of the most perfect being. It is an Idea related to experience and 
to which experience furnishes a content. 

Buddhism. — There are two remarks which appear to be appro- 
priate to our examination of Enthusiasm. The first is in reference 
to Buddhism. 1 It was certainly a profound observation which 

1 Rhys-Davids, " Buddhism," p. 120. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 



51 



led the author of that Religion in constructing the Wheel of Life 
to place the Sankharas between ignorance and consciousness. The 
confection, the putting together, must precede the consciousness. 
But on the other hand Buddhism lacks that conception of a con- 
tinuum which Kant used with such good effect in the phenomenal 
world. In our conception the Sankharas or the confection bound 
together in a continuum is the subconscious self from which con- 
sciousness springs. 

The Social Consciousness. — The other remark is concerning the 
social consciousness. There is little hope of working out a con- 
sistent theory of any form of this phenomena, until some .better 
Philosophy of the Unconscious has been worked out. Social 
scientists up to this time have accepted a social consciousness as a 
fact and have built upon it in a more or less unsatisfactory way, 
but its essence has not yet been sufficiently discovered. The work 
of psychologists in entering the subconscious precincts of the soul, 
whether we call this region the Sankharas with Buddha or the 
Oversoul with Emerson, is the most hopeful effort that has been 
made to build up a science of social self-consciousness. 

The God-Idea. — The ground of religious experience has now 
been sufficiently traversed to allow us to introduce the process of 
the unfolding of the God-idea. We have found that this idea 
stands over against experience in toto and that its purpose acts as 
a mediator between the facts of experience and the infinite beyond. 
Like the dove sent out of the ark it finds no place to rest. It 
searches in the realm of material things and finds some objects 
and events which are true and valuable for the conscious self but 
each of these objects and events lacks permanence and finality. 1 
Therefore at some stage of religious history the mind becomes 
introspective in its search for a fulfilment of its ontological pur- 
pose. Various kinds of revelations were brought to light from 
the conscious and subliminal regions of the mind. It does not 
matter whether revelations were derived from dreams, intoxica- 
tions, auto-intoxications or the Holy Spirit, they had to come to 
men as experiences and were necessarily subject to the forms of 

1 Op. cit, p. 121. 



52 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



thought. It was also necessary to subject all revelations to the 
tests of truth and value. The process of unfolding the God-idea 
was a process of building up experience according to the rule and 
plummet of these two tests. It is only necessary to arrive at a 
true history of Religion to reach a description of this process. Two 
or three things may be found on the surface. In the first place 
the concept of material helpfulness is everywhere first apparent. 
In fact many religious lives never pass beyond that thought of 
God. The supreme being is God Almighty. As the conception 
of the worth of knowledge reveals the preciousness of wisdom, it is 
added, and the all-wise God is worshiped. It was not in vain 
that religiously-disposed persons sought by fasting to come into 
contact with the spirit world, for their devotion and self-sacrifice 
gave prominence to the internal values of life. They brought the 
virtues into distinction and in this way the ethical content of the 
Ontological Idea was supplied. The conception of a Good God 
cannot be surpassed but it requires an ever-deepening experience 
to analyze its significance. Such expressions as God is a spirit, 
God is truth and God is love are necessarily final. The last and 
highest revelation of God which J udaism endeavored to utter and 
Jesus express by his life is union with humanity, and into this 
helpful and blessed relationship all souls are freely invited to 
enter. The Father was in Jesus and He is also in all those who 
receive Jesus in a real experience. 

What I have said is not intended as a denial of a supernatural 
revelation. It is an assertion of it. It is not intended to deny 
that some souls have had a greater enduement with the Holy 
Ghost than others. It is, however, intended that these experiences 
should be included with other religious experiences. It would 
also be claimed, that all religious experiences are accompanied by 
definite psychological processes. But the heart of our contention 
is that every religious experience has been accompanied by the 
form of the Ontological Idea and that the will of this Idea has 
served a constructive purpose. 



PART III. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 
I. 

Ethical Principles. 
Methods. — " Whether the treatment of that class of knowledge 
with which reason is occupied follows the secure method of a 
science or not, can easily be determined by the result. If, after 
repeated preparation, it comes to a standstill, as soon as its real 
goal is approached, or is obliged, in order to reach it, to retrace 
its steps again and again, and strike into fresh paths ; again, if it 
is impossible to produce unanimity among those who are engaged 
in the same work, as to the manner in which their common object 
should be obtained, we may be convinced that such a study is far 
from having attained to the secure method of a science, but is 
groping only in the dark." 1 These words with which Kant began 
the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, 
come to our memory very forcibly as we enter the field of ethics. 
Standing along with Religion in the border land of physics and 
metaphysics this field has been the scene of much fierce contro- 
versy. If we begin by defining Ethics as " the science of con- 
duct," 2 the way might appear to be clear enough ; but conduct or 
" all moral action " as Aristotle says, " that is all purpose — would 
seem to aim at some good result." 3 In other words conduct is 
traceable to character and character to self and self to being or 
reality. The Agnostic thereupon appears who knows nothing of 
Reality and ignores all but the facts of conduct. For him Ethics 

1 Kant, " Critique of Pure Reason." Max M tiller trans., p. 688. 
2 Seth, " Ethical Principles." 
3 Aristotle, " Nic. Ethics," p. 1. 

53 



54 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



is simply a science which treats of man as a part of nature. On 
the other hand the Kantian transcendentalist appears who classi- 
fies the moral agent in the phenomenal world but asserts that his 
freedom belongs to the intelligible world. And in the third place 
the Hegelian transcendentalist asserts " the entire immanence of 
God in the process of the universe." 1 With three such extremes 
the prospect of peace is not visible. Thus it has ever been in the 
field of Ethics. Treatises on Types of Ethical Theory, Problems 
of Conduct and Methods of Ethics are necessary to clear the 
ground. With these facts before us it is certainly evident that 
"the sure method of a science" of Ethics has not yet been 
discovered. 

Our interest in this class of discussions arises from the close 
relation which Ethics bears to Religion. To be sure the Positivist 
who ignores the idea of God as a norm of ethics will deny this 
relation, but we have an unanswerable reply to his denial in the 
facts of history. It is the purpose of this concludiug part of our 
thesis to show that the Ontological Idea in its practical signifi- 
cance offers a dynamic to Ethics. 2 

We have already accepted the challenge of the scientist. When 
he demanded that we should be guided by experience we acceded 
to his demands but required that the sum total of experience shall 
be included. Our examination of religious experience as discov- 
ered by anthropology and tested by psychology revealed that the 
concept of God has a vital content. We must now subject the 
facts of Ethics from which the Positivist would construct his science 
to the same examination. The same analysis of the content of 
consciousness, to which the Ontological proof directed our atten- 
tion at first, will continue to serve as a guiding principle and we 
use it with the greater confidence since it has already given us so 
much help in the examination of religious experience. Before we 
enter upon this examination, however, it may be well to remind 
ourselves that the Problem of Ethics is "the interpretation of our 

iSeth, "Ethical Principles," p. 390. 

2 Martineau, " Study of Religion," 1:16; Flint, "Theism," p. 242; also 
Muller's "Natural Religion," p. 170. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



55 



judgments of ethical value. 9,1 We are also concerned with Aris- 
totle's identification of moral action with purpose. In other words, 
there is an intention inseparably connected with every moral act. 
These two facts then, the purpose of action and our judgment 
upon the action with its purpose, are at the root of the Problem of 
Ethics. 

The discovery of a purpose at the heart of every moral act can- 
not fail to remind us of the intention of ideas which we met with 
in the analysis of consciousness. Neither do we forget that the 
purpose of the Ontological Idea is to seek its Other in a concretely 
embodied life. Here is a purpose, then, which must express itself 
in action, in action directed toward a definite end, and here stands 
ethical conduct on the other hand, as action directed toward a defi- 
nite end, which must be joined with, and judged by its purpose. 
What would hinder our identifying these two purposes ? The fact 
that this question arises is the reason for our extending our search 
for the practical content of the Ontological Proof to the field of 
ethics. The quest of the Ontological Idea for its Other or in the 
language of Religion the heart's quest for God is a mighty quest. 
Let us not suppose that the purpose of an idea because it is tran- 
scendental must therefore be weak and despised. We have but to 
pause for a moment and remember the constructive power of ideas 
to convince ourselves that we are not speaking of mere figments of 
the imagination. The Idea of God leading and compelling men 
through its purpose has given the world its Religion with all that 
this significant word includes. And it is the contention of this 
thesis that the same purpose of the same idea is the motive of 
ethical action. It does not matter whether I ask with Kant 2 
" What ought I to do ? " or whether I say with Aristotle " At 
what shall I aim ? " whether I make doing or being, conduct or 
character the chief end of life, this purpose is at the heart of it all. 
Aristotle said of the supreme good — " Surely then a scientific 
knowledge of it will have a critical influence upon our lives, and 
will make us, like bowmen who have a mark at which to aim, all 

^eth, " Ethical Principles," p. 37. 

2 Kant, " Critique of Pare Keason," p. 646. 



56 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



the more likely to hit upon that which is our good." 1 If this 
is true concerning the supreme good by how much more is it true 
concerning God and if it can be shown that the course of human 
actions has been changed by the force of their Idea of God we have 
thus found an additional content for the Ontological Idea. 

By the purpose of an idea I mean that which redeems it from 
chaos. A chord of music, this pen with which I write, or a 
human being is an embodied purpose and without the purpose 
there would be no idea involved in them. When we speak, there- 
fore, of the purpose of the Ontological Idea we mean that which 
renders it self-consistent and intelligible. In this particular case 
the purpose is perfection which we think of as the greatest con- 
ceivable. This perfection varies subjectively with the mind which 
conceives it but it has a progressive definiteness. It involves a 
grasp of the content of the Object of which it is an idea and a 
reaction upon the individual to whom the idea belongs. For this 
reason we devoted the second part of this thesis to an examination 
of the religious emotions as elements of conscious experience and 
unfolded their relation to the Object of Religion. This consti- 
tutes the subjective aspect of our subject. But a purpose as an 
active principle compels expression and Religion, therefore, must 
have, as it is well known it does have, an objective aspect which 
I would call the ethical function of Religion. It is the purpose of 
the Ontological Idea to mould the individual and social life into 
harmony with its anticipation of the Object of Religion. In the 
language of every-day life Ethics is the effect of the knowledge of 
God in the moral life of men. In fact we have drawn near to 
Max Miiller's theory, 2 that " religion consists in the perception of 
the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the 
moral character of man." Our position differs from this, in hold- 
ing that the Infinite is an Idea which embraces the perception of 
finite objects, but we agree with the contention that it influences 
the moral character. 

Relation to Science and Religion. — In the first place, then, the 
matter of fact of conduct belongs to experience. As matter of 

Aristotle, "Nic. Ethics," p. 2, trans. Williams. 
2 Muller, " Natural Keligion," p. 188. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



57 



fact it constitutes the subject matter of a science. In so far it is 
proper to speak of the science of Ethics rather than the meta- 
physics of Ethics. The facts of Ethics also belong to the events 
of history and as such the genetic method of treatment is appli- 
cable to them. On the other hand it is necessary to subject the 
facts which science gathers and systematizes, in a qualitative man- 
ner. Their relation to other facts in a sum total of life expe- 
riences have to be assigned, and at this point we pass beyond the 
mere that of ethical experience and begin to inquire for the what. 
In this process we discover two relations which any genetic theory 
of Ethics must reveal. The first is that Ethics has grown up with 
and sprung from Religion. In other words, that there is an inti- 
mate connection between character and conduct and the religious 
functions of life. And in the second place, since conduct springs 
from character, and character belongs to self or a self-conscious 
being, the facts of Ethics must be subjected to a psychological 
treatment. Let us look first at the religious relation. 

Anthropology. — It is necessary to turn to anthropology for a 
proof of the relation of Religion to morality. For historical rea- 
sons we cannot accept Kant's assertion that " amongst all the 
public religions that have ever existed the Christian alone is 
moral." 1 The fact is that in primitive culture Religion and 
morality have developed together. The conceptions which differ- 
ent races of mankind have held of the Object of Religion in differ- 
ent stages of their civilization are distinctly reflected in the 
individual and social character and conduct of their people. Make 
a sufficient deduction for the influence of nature as an environ- 
ment on the character of the inhabitants of a given district and 
there still remains an overplus of influence arising from the fact of 
nature worship. The culture of Greece, the sanguinary forceful- 
ness of the Norse and the contemplative disposition of the Hindu 
each reflect the environment which worked itself into their On to- 
logical Idea. There are in the peoples of each of these nations 
certain features, decidedly unmoral, which are to be accounted for 
by the incompleteness of the Theogonic process ; but these facts 

1 Abbott, " Kant's Theory of Ethics," p. 360. 



58 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



do not coDceal from us the moral influences of their Religion. In 
the next place it is to be noticed that races, which continue to 
hold animistic conceptions, fail to reveal elevated standards of 
morality ; while, those races which have adopted mythical inter- 
pretations of the forces of nature, arriving at an anthropomorphic 
polytheism or pantheism, have made greater progress in moral cul- 
ture. And where materialistic religions have given way either to 
a psychological religion such as Buddhism or spiritual Henotheism 
as in J udaism and Christianity, the highest stages of ethical cul- 
ture have been attained. A God of righteousness or an Holy 
Father, when represented in the Ontological Idea, does, as a matter 
of fact, influence the character and conduct of the people who 
hold such an ideal. 

These statements though exceedingly general seem to me suffi- 
cient to establish the assertion that Religion influences the moral 
character of the human race. The Ontological Idea has constantly 
served as a constructive principle in Ethics. This is the thesis 
which Kant has worked out elaborately in his Theory of Ethics. 
There is, however, a limitation to the ethical force of nature reli- 
gions. In whatever stage of culture we find them they are more 
or less necessitarian. The Animist is at the mercy of spirits with 
which his mind has peopled nature. They act in him and outside 
of him as representatives of every helping or hindering force. 
Such a view of life leaves little place for free moral action. Cun- 
ning and courage are about the only practical virtues worth 
developing in connection with animistic religion. On the other 
hand, when we turn to a more fully developed Polytheism or Pan- 
theism, fate immediately confronts us. The gods as well as men 
in the Greek mythology were subject to the three sisters at the 
loom. A like necessity ruled the gods of the Norse mythology. 
And if this is true for Polytheism it is much more true for Pan- 
theism. Whether we look at this system as a religion or a 
philosophy it is essentially fatalistic. The individual is held fast 
in a relentless mechanism, which destroys all distinction between 
nature and character, what is and what ought to be, and to that 
extent an ethic for the Pantheist is impossible. He cannot sever 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



59 



responsibility and liberty in an ethical idea of life. It must be 
admitted, if we follow up the process, that Theism, Deism and 
materialism are in a like manner fatalistic. It does not matter 
whether the moral agent is the product of heredity and environ- 
ment or a part of a system governed by the law of a Deus ex 
machina or only a predestined individual, his liberty is denied and 
to that extent he ceases to be responsible. It is a fact, however, 
that ethical culture has proceeded under all these philosophic and 
religious systems but it has proceeded in spite of them and not by 
their aid. It has proceeded because of the subconscious processes 
and beliefs, which frequently assert their power, when conscious 
reason fails to wisely execute its function. And this fact, has no 
doubt given cause for the endeavor to separate Religion and Ethics. 
Genetic Ethics, however, will ever warn us against such a division. 

For purposes of thought it would be very convenient to assign 
to Religion the reflective functions of life and allow Ethics to have 
complete possession of the field of moral action. This division 
would isolate the two sciences and prevent their conflicting 
in any way. So far as the facts of Ethics are concerned no objec- 
tion to this division could be raised, but a difficulty appears, so 
soon as we begin to look at the quality of ethical acts and judg- 
ments. When this is done a norm or standard of judgments is 
demanded and it becomes necessary to enter the meditative pre- 
cincts of the soul. It is true, on the other hand, that, when we 
think of the origin of Religion, our attention is more occupied with 
the emotions and their relation to the Idea of God, which the 
mind sustains linked with them, but a merely internal Religion 
would be fruitless. The religious emotions from their very nature 
must express themselves. The purpose of their idea is an active 
energizing purpose. It must express itself in a living embodi- 
ment of activity. This is to say that the activity of life which 
springs from religious emotions and ideas belongs as truly to Re- 
ligion as the inner contemplation of the soul's relation to God. 
Religion, therefore, comprehends both the inner state, which 
represents the limited self sustaining a certain relation to the most 
perfect being, and the activity by which the self seeks to consum- 



60 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



mate that relation. The activity, however, being purposive, is 
included by science in the sphere of Ethics, but in no case is it 
able to stand alone. On the contemplative side of Religion we are 
concerned with the purpose of the idea and on the active or ethi- 
cal side we have the same concern with the will of the deed. It 
is the will or intention which redeems both the idea and the act 
from chaos. 

Psychology. — The second requirement of a genetic treatment 
of Ethics is psychological. Moral ] acts are originated, regulated, 
and governed by the soul. It was very proper therefore of 
David Hume when he attempted to introduce the experimental 
method of reasoning into moral subjects to call his work a Treat- 
ise of Human Nature. His method of proceeding from the origin 
of ideas and their composition to the Passions and thence to 
Morals is highly instructive. This method, however, of connect- 
ing morals with Human Nature was as old as the ancients, 1 only 
it had not been so completely worked out before. Neither did 
Hume work out the problem satisfactorily, valuable as his contri- 
bution of the empirical study of ethics has been, modern psychol- 
ogy has succeeded in presenting a better representation of Human 
Nature. And to this extent it has given a powerful impulse to 
the appreciative as opposed to the descriptive study of ethics. 2 

In its psychological relation Ethics has followed a parallel with 
Religion. I mean by this statement that the historical theories 
of Ethics have connected themselves with one or other mental 
faculty. The Socratic Theory that right knowing involves right 
doing has appeared again and again and plainly connects itself 
with the knowledge faculty or the intellect. Hedonism whether 
taken in its Epicurean form or as stated by Bentham, Mill and 
their successors is an exaltation of feeling and belongs to the sense 
function. And last of all the will faculty is represented by 
Stoicism which is sometimes theistic and sometimes atheistic. In 
order to avoid the necessary incompleteness of such ethical func- 
tioning efforts have been made to combine two faculties under one 

iSeth, " Ethical Principles," p. 39. 
2 Op. tit, p. 26. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



61 



theory. Thus Hedonism, which in its bald form of self-seeking 
does not seem to leave any room for disinterested action, is helped 
over the difficulty by subsidizing the intellect, the feelings alone 
having no ability to construct a canon of consequences. The 
fact of altruism is admitted both in the individual and in so- 
ciety, but it is admitted as a disguised egoism, intelligence having 
revealed that present suffering for others buys future rewards. 
Stoicism also seeks an alliance with intelligence. Kant is the 
classic representative of this combination. 1 In his Theory of 
Ethics he hits upon the good will as the only good thing in the 
world but he worked out his marvellous theory of knowledge as a 
preface to the question " What ought I to do ? " And the good 
will is placed under the direction of the Pure Practical Reason. 

Actions are of two kinds, either impulsive or purposive. Im- 
pulsive action is the reaction of the sensorium upon an impression, 
purposive is linked with ideas. We can say that a human being 
is responsible for impulsive action only to the extent that he is 
responsible to transform what he is by nature into a character. 
Impulsive action is altogether or nearly immediate. Purposive 
action on the other hand is reflective, indicates choice and reveals 
character. It connects therefore with the faculties of the soul and 
at the same time calls attention to a norm of judgment which 
gives it color or character. Out of the manifold of possible ac- 
tions it fixes upon one and makes it real. In observing the rela- 
tion of purposive action to the soul we are led to remark that 
psychology has done for Ethics precisely the same that it has done 
for Religion. It has shown the futility of every attempt to func- 
tion Ethics in any way just as it has shown that Religion is not to 
be tied to one particular faculty. The will for example is not to 
be taken in isolation. In the act of choice, elements of knowledge 
and feeling are present and a feeling is nothing without the ideas 
and preferences which hold it in solution. Every part of an in- 
dividual's being participates in his ethical act. It is true, that, at 
one stage or another of the act, one or other faculty predominates, 
but even this is difficult to determine. In making a choice, for 

1 Kant's ''Theory of Ethics," Abbott, p. 9. 



62 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



example, there is the thought of the object of choice, together 
with the desirable and undesirable relations of that choice, which 
are the feelings of anticipation pleasant or unpleasant, held in 
representation, and finally there is the predominance, which con- 
stitutes the acceptance or rejection of the object. All this is 
accompanied by what may be described as a wave motion in the 
psychical process. But in this entire composite representation 
what would be described as the supreme function? Like the 
three brothers in the Arabian tale, one has the medicine, another 
has the seeing glass, and the third has the transporting carpet. 
Who shall say which saved the dying father ? 

It does not help this method of connecting a theory of Ethics 
with a faculty, if one of the faculties is made intuitional. A 
theory of Conscience, is, no doubt, to be expected, in connection 
with what we have already said concerning enthusiasm ; for the 
success of Religion in finding God lends encouragement to the 
hope of an intuitive apprehension of the good and the bad. But 
our conclusion under that topic was that intuition apart from ex- 
perience is full of vagaries. Truth and value must serve as its 
tests. Any attempt, therefore to extend the powers of the know- 
ing faculty, as is done in intuitional ethics, cannot be differenti- 
ated from Eeligion. Any discovery of the good or the bad in the 
abstract, by a peculiar faculty of the mind known as conscience, 
or the Moral Sense, is just as hopeless, as the Hedonistic attempt 
to discover good and evil by means of the sense faculty ; and Hed- 
onism has the advantage of an appeal to experience. 

Norms. — What we have said of the theories of Ethics, connected 
with the various psychical functions, has already served to indi- 
cate the various norms by which ethical judgments are regulated. 
Rational systems find some law either discovered in a revealed 
will of God, or developed in the evolution of society, or the cat- 
egorical imperative of Pure Practical Reason. The norm of sen- 
sational ethics is pleasure, either the happiness of the individual 
or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. And last of all 
the standard of the volitionalist is value. But, our psychological 
examination of the process of functioning Ethics revealed, that 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



63 



neither of these theories is capable of standing alone ; and, if in 
isolation, they are insufficient to account for the facts of expe- 
rience, their norm of moral judgments must be rejected. So long 
as one or the other of these ethical theories, in their various de- 
velopments, try to give an account of conduct, we must expect 
the field of ethics to continue to serve as a battlefield. A moral 
act is neither purely rational, nor purely volitional, much less, is 
its entire reference, present or future, mere happiness. It is 
neither to be judged, in any final way, by a law which would show 
it to be right or wrong, nor by pleasure which serves as its index, 
nor by its value. Either of these norms alone and all of them 
synthesized do not furnish a sufficient ground for all ethical judg- 
ments. On the other hand our theory, and, I may add, the Gos- 
pel of Christianity, finds the true norm of conduct in a life, a 
living unity with the Father. It is true that the teachings of 
Jesus represent the Will of the Father as the law of the Kingdom 
of Heaven, nevertheless, that will is not a heteronomous will but 
an autonomous relation of the soul of the believer to his God. 
This idea of moral judgments, and this alone, agrees with what 
our study of the Ontological proof has led us to conceive of the 
relation of life to the Most Perfect Being. 

II. 

The Ontological Method of Ethics. 
Metaphysics. — It is now time to define our attitude toward 
metaphysics. We have avoided the use of this term because of 
the implication of dualism contained in it. The living relation of 
the seen and the unseen of the sensible and the intelligible, is de- 
stroyed by sundering even in thought the physical and the meta- 
physical. The course of our discussion must have revealed that 
we accept mental and physical phenomena alike as real. There 
is no reality isolated from what is known in experience. There 
is indeed an infinite manifold of reality which experience has not 
comprehended, but it is not in any sense severed or isolated from 
what is apprehended. No particle of reality is known either in 



64 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



its infinite or its infinitesimal relations, nevertheless, some parti- 
cles are known relatively and they connect with what is not known. 
The soul and God are not known fully and never can be so known 
by a finite understanding but they are known in part, and a God 
other than the God of experience does not exist. If then by meta- 
physical we mean all that our senses are incapable of apprehend- 
ing of reality I do not object to the term so long as it sets no limits 
to the possibility of experience. 

Again ideas belong to the totality of reality. They are not to 
be severed from sensible reality for the real cannot exist without 
them. They constitute the intention of things and hold the same 
purpose in themselves which they embody in things. It is the 
identity of the purpose in the object and in the idea which renders 
knowledge possible. 

Our third position is that an event as well as a thing may em- 
body a purpose. Events without purpose are accidents. Events 
embodying purposes are rational acts. Under this head then all 
moral actions are to be included. The cognitive power of the 
soul by means of attention combines events which would otherwise 
pass without a meaning. Intelligent choice consists in holding 
attention by means of ideas to those objects of choice which will 
advance the best interests of life. The supreme or regulative 
purpose is the will of the Ontological Idea and a life is moral or 
immoral according to the conduct of the individual under the 
guidance of this supreme purpose. 

Kant. — It is necessary at this point to examine the transcen- 
dental Theory of Ethics proposed by Immanuel Kant. The weak- 
ness of his theory of knowledge is nowhere more apparent than in 
his Ethics. It introduces the impossible situation of a man's con- 
scious life entirely shut up to the sensible world and as such sub- 
ject to the necessity of natural law, at the same time receiving a 
categorical imperative — a moral law — from the intelligible 
world in which his liberty has its abode. It is not remarkable 
when we consider this situation that he began by saying : " Noth- 
ing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, 

1 Kant, " Theory of Ethics," trans, by Abbott, p. 9. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



65 



which can be called good without qualification, except a good 
Will," and concluded with a discussion " on the radical evil in 
human nature. " 1 " The good will is good not because of what 
it performs or effects .... but simply by virtue of the volition, 
IT is good in itself." It has an absolute value. "Duty" is de- 
fined as " the necessity of acting from respect for the law." 2 And 
" an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the 
purpose which is to be attained by it but from the maxim by which 
it is determined." The stoicism revealed in these quotations is 
obtrusive, but we are reminded of Lotze's remark that " an uncon- 
ditioned should or ought to be is unthinkable." 3 

The second important point in Kant's theory is " that all moral 
conceptions have their seat and origin completely a priori in the 
reason." 4 It is their pure origin which gives them worth and 
renders it important to exclude everything empirical from them. 
With this point in view he proceeded to deduce the Categorical 
Imperative which must be derived from the general concept of a 
rational being. The moral law, thus derived, differs from all 
natural laws and " the idea of it, which determines the will, is 
distinct from all the principles that determine events in nature 
according to the law of causality, because in their case the deter- 
mining principles must themselves be phenomena," 5 and since 
this is true the will, determined by such an universal legislative 
form, must be free from the law of causality. " Such indepen- 
dence is called freedom." Of the three concepts God, freedom 
and immortality , the second alone is proved by the apodictic law 
of practical reason. The possibility of the other two is to be 
proved by the fact that freedom actually exists. 

By the discovery of the categorical imperative in the pure 

practical reason Kant arrived at the principle of autonomy. The 

wilFs independence of all matter of the law, as a desired object, 

constitutes freedom in the negative sense ; but autonomy or self 

1 Ibid., p. 325. 
2 Ibid., p. 16. 

3 Lotze, " Philosophy of Beligion," p. 157. 

4 Kant, " Theory of Ethics," p. 28. 

5 Ibid., p. 116. 



66 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



legislation is freedom in a positive sense. 1 On the other hand all 
heteronomous theories are opposed to the morality of the will. 

Kant identified the moral law as a law of Holiness with the will 
of God as a perfect being. It thus represents the one point of 
contact between the phenomenal and real world. The existence 
of God, however, is still only a postulate, and if the commands of 
the moral law are to be realized in any way the existence of God 
and the reality of immortality must be postulated. 

The discussion on the Indwelling of the Bad Principle along with 
the Good discovered the fact of radical evil in human nature. 
Man is either morally good or bad, he cannot be partly one and 
partly the other. There is an original capacity for good along 
with the propensity to evil in human nature, but the fact that the 
propensity to evil belongs to man universally proves it to be an 
acquired capacity. " The capability or incapability of the elective 
will to adopt the moral law into its maxims or not, arising from 
this natural propensity, is called a good or a bad heart. 2 And 
the degrees of badness conceivable are to be termed frailty, im- 
purity and depravity. Frailty accepts the ideal conception of the 
moral law but is too weak to resist sensuous inclinations. Im- 
purity does not adopt the law alone as its sufficient motive but 
makes use of other means to determine the elective will to duty. 
And depravity prefers other springs to the dynamic of the moral 
law. 

There remains to be considered " the restoration of the original 
capacity for good to its full power." 3 Kant takes the position 
that " what man is or ought to be he must make or must have 
made himself." The hope of the restoration he finds in the cate- 
gorical imperative. The respect for the moral law can never be 
lost, therefore all that is necessary is the restoration of its purity 
as self-sufficient. When it is thus restored by the elective will 
the one who has adopted it is on the way to holiness by an endless 
progress. Virtue is thus gradually acquired. From these obser- 

1 Kant, " Theory of Ethics," p. 122. 
2 Kant, " Theory of Ethics," p. 336. 
s lbid., p. 352. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



67 



vations the conclusion is drawn that " the moral culture of a man 
must begin with the transformation of a mind and the foundation 
of character. 1 The moral capacity in us we cannot cease to regard 
with the highest astonishment, it proclaims a divine origin and 
must arouse the spirit to enthusiasm. 3 If the moral law com- 
mands that we shall now be better men, it follows inevitably that 
we also can be better. 

Christian Ethics. — This selection of quotations from the Theory 
of Ethics is sufficient to reveal the general features of the Kantian 
theory and at the same time manifest its points of likeness to and 
difference from our own theory. The fact that Kant appealed to 
the a priori method to establish the moral law furnishes at least a 
point of contact with the same method when used to prove the 
existence of a most perfect being. The difference, however, is in 
that the moral law is but one determinate part of reality while the 
most perfect being embraces reality. And Kant was driven by 
his own reasoning to postulate the existence of God and the reality 
of immortality by the fact that pure reason does discover the 
moral law. If the Kantian system had been discovered outside 
of and away from Christian influences it would be truly a remark- 
able system ; but, when we find in it, a mighty effort to crush the 
principles revealed in the Christian system of thought into the 
mould of his transcendental idealism, we are repelled by it. Take 
the categorical imperative " Act only on that maxim whereby 
thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal 
law," and put down beside it the rule, " All things whatsoever ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them " 3 — is 
the first possible without the second ? Pure reason unaided by 
religion never could have reached such an height. On the other 
hand Eeligion, grasping in its Ontological Idea a perfect Being 
and holding experience in an inseparable relation to that idea, pre- 
pared the way for reason. 

Again the principle of autonomy is the very heart of Christian 

1 Ibid., p. 356. 
2 Ibid., p. 358. 
3 Matthew, 7 : 12. 



68 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



ethics as expounded by Saint Paul. It is the very essence of the 
metanoia. Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian alike, out of 
Christ, are in the bondage of Heteronomy. The law to them was 
a yoke of bondage. The law itself is good but it is always looked 
upon as imposed from without, and obedience, the empirical filling 
in of this good law, was discovered to be impossible. Faith, how- 
ever, by accepting Christ and entering into union with Him also 
introduces the law as an autonomous principle. For one whose 
" life is hid with Christ in God " 1 the law of God or the perfect 
will of God is a part of his being. This change is so great that 
Paul ever described it as a resurrection from the dead. 

Calvinistic Ethics. — The spontaneousness of the autonomous 
principle of life brings to our thought the dilemma of the scho- 
lastics. " Is the good good because God wills it or does God will it 
because it is good ? " 2 If we adopt the first, we thereby deny the 
character of God ; and if we accept the latter, we give up the 
supremacy of God. This dilemma is to be avoided by saying 
God is good and there is no goodness apart from Him. " There 
is none good but one that is God," and human goodness arises 
from union with him. Since this subject was discussed under the 
topic metanoia it is not needful to enlarge upon it in this place. 
There is, however, an important problem of ethics which has its 
solution in this conception of the union of the believer with God. 
It is everywhere apparent in what might be called Calvinistic 
Ethics. It is also prominent in the Kantian theory. It is tersely 
expressed in the saying : " He that is not with me is against me," 
or as Kant expressed it : u A man is either good or bad ; he cannot 
be part bad and part good." These sayings seem to conflict with 
what we constantly observe. Good and bad do seem to be mixed 
in all human life. This seeming, however, disappears when we 
cease to judge human actions by their outward worth and fix our 
attention upon their inmost purpose. In the last analysis good- 
ness or badness are determined by the relation which the soul sus- 
tains to God. This position the Calvinists describe as an inclina- 

1 Collossians, 3 : 3. 
s Lotze, op. eit. , p. 160. 



THE IDEA OF GOD AND ETHICS. 



69 



tion or disposition of the will. In my theory it is rather that 
relation to God which makes the will of God autonomous in the 
believer. This is not to say that the relation to God which a 
metanoia discovers makes the character of the individual im- 
mediately perfect and complete. Virtue is still attained by an in- 
finite progress. Nevertheless the helpful relation which the soul 
of the believer sustains to God makes the pathway to virtue 
easier. 

Our agreement with Kant in regard to heteronomy and au- 
tonomy is thus substantial. In the preceding chapter we have 
already described the heteronomous theories as unable to stand 
alone. All systems which depend upon empiricism must fail to 
discover a universal law and all rational systems whether theistic 
or atheistic fail to give a dynamic and therefore "gender to 
bondage. " It does not matter whether the norm of conduct is 
a will of God revealed by divine inspiration or a law of nature 
discovered by reason, the bondage is equally galling. The only 
true freedom is the freedom gained in the Christian sense of a 
union with the source of all goodness. At this point our de- 
parture from Kant is apparent and for a better way. Of what 
possible value can goodness be if the doer of the good act can 
have no motive but the act itself. On the other hand if a good 
action is done in a real world and springs from the actor's relation 
to that world, our conception of its value is enhanced. 

The Idea of God, therefore, has served as a guide in criticising 
ethical theories and in discovering the true solution of the prob- 
lem of ethics. It contributes the long-sought dynamic by dis- 
covering the purpose of the Ontological Idea. It leads to the 
true norm of conduct by revealing a perfect will embodied in a 
perfect life. And this process has been verified by the historical 
revelation of goodness to the world first in a nation, Israel, and 
then in an historic person, Jesus Christ. 

Conclusion. 

We have now traversed the way which the subject of our thesis 
indicated for us. That way was determined by the inner nature 



70 



THE IDEA OF GOD. 



of the theme. Two things have appeared prominently throughout 
the discussion. The first is that the Ontological argument either 
directly or by implication has served as a guiding principle in 
thought. It demands a theory of knowledge. The transition 
which Anselm made from the concept of a most perfect being to 
the God of religious experience requires a discovery of the rela- 
tions subsisting between concept and being. The problem thus 
proposed has been discussed in every theory of knowledge worthy 
of mention. We have found in Idealism the only answer that 
meets the requirements of experience. Again the a priori nature 
of the argument gave thought an introspective turn and prepared 
the way for a science of psychology and a scientific psychology of 
religious experiences. And in the last place the concept of a most 
perfect being since it is a part of the sum total of experience could 
not fail to influence the moral character of man. Thus in these 
vital concerns of thought, experience and conduct the Ontological 
Proof of the existence of God has served as a valuable guiding 
principle. This I would call the first part of its practical content. 

The other part is concerned more directly with its validity. 
In the analysis of Consciousness we found a condition, a relation 
between concept and emotion internally and between purpose and 
act externally which has to be applied to the Ontological concept. 
The idea of an Other is ever connected with the limitation of self. 
This idea is analyzed as experience furnishes it with a content. 
Its purpose holds together those experiences which stand the test 
of truth and value. Thus the Ontological Idea takes its place as 
a constructive force in the world. It dominates the religious life. 
It also gives the only true Dynamic to Ethics. I cannot conceive 
of an impersonal categorical imperative. And Lotze has well said : 
" A value appreciated by no one and consisting in pleasure and 
pain for no one is something which contradicts itself." 1 Keligion, 
then, consisting of character, all that a man is in himself and in 
his relation to God, and conduct or all that a man does, is the 
other practical content of the Ontological Proof of the existence 
of God. " Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice." 

1 Lotze, " Philosophy of Keligion," p. 157. 



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